


Veritas Virumque

by DatAsymptote



Category: Ever After High
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 14:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23512744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DatAsymptote/pseuds/DatAsymptote
Summary: Turnus Wyllt, the next King Merlin's son in "The Princess Mayblossom", finally meets the man who will call him “my liege”. The next Fanfarinet is already out of Ever After High, his name is Gabriel, and he has a job and pays taxes.But Turnus has a memory of someone else: someone his age, with pink hair and an unfathomable smile. No one else around him seems to show any care or concern for this “Bastion Fanfarinet”, neither will anyone acknowledge his existence. It’s as if someone had took a scalpel and spliced him out of the world.You can cut and cut away at something until it’s all gone, but scars will still be left behind. There are too many scars in the World of Ever After to deny the once-existence of Bastion Fanfarinet, too many remnants of his presence.With his love for high-fantasy worldbuilding and peculiar ways of understanding reality with mathemagics, Turnus Wyllt is set on one thing: this discrepancy is the only thing at Ever After High that has truly piqued his curiosity, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t get to the bottom of it.
Kudos: 4





	1. The Wisest and Most Prudent

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“

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_If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals._

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”  
  
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I sing of truth, and a man. Or well, I write. Singing is not a skill I harness, though I wish I could. It’d make carriage car karaoke sessions more pleasant.

This is a story set at Ever After High. Yes, that one, the school for future fairytales? It’s eminent, good at what it does -- it has to be, or else the Charming clans, and other significant Royal families will complain, and that would be the end of it.

I could tell you many stories about this institution. In fact, I probably have. My narrator license has been put to good use already.

Here’s one of these stories.

So.

I sing of truth, and a man.

A young man, a prince, who hailed from a harsh, cold North, a land filled with mythical creatures - meese and goose -, a land with strange decorum so far removed from our conventional fairytale tradition. Our prince is from Canada, worlds removed from our dear German Ever After.

There’s no muse I want to summon -- did you hexpect that I would? I know, right now I mock the lofty style of epics. Our prince wouldn’t want that, so may I have the humility to continue my story in the most down to earth tone.

* * *

Turnus Wyllt began his mornings fussing over his hair.

Items of magic usually had little or nasty effects on him, but the thing about hair was that it was dead. It never experienced the same sort of physical repulsion he did with magical items, no force pushing back at him, like opposite poles of a magnet. Magical conditioner made it sleek, and magical oil fixed up damaged ends.

Any regular Prince Charming had perfect hair. Shiny, voluminous. Turnus, for once, was no exception. He had his hair straightened, and made sure to grow it long. It was beautiful, though less regal and more wise, like a traditional sage mage.

Somewhere, on the other side of the room, Orleans le Nouveau was using his hands as a comb.

The next King of the Gold Mines was always a presentable prince, and even overdressed for school. But as presentable as he was, Orleans barely spent an infinitesimal of the time Turnus did on hair. Orleans’ blond strands stuck out at weird angles and was unkempt in a charmingly boyish manner. Damsels were into that, apparently. Not that Orleans cared much, for he only had eyes for his future Toutbelle, but Kings do appeal to majority preferences.

It was six in the morning.

By the time hair was done, by the time the princes had freshened up and put on their day clothes and packed their bags, by the time Orleans had stared forlornly and dramatically out of the window and Turnus rushed to finish up the second half of his Kingdom Management thronework, it was seven.

And at seven, Ramsey Baartholomew was already outside the princes’ dorm room, checking his watch and looking frustrated. “Early to rise, early to bed, makes a prince healthy and well-bred,” the next King of Sheep and Ghosts recited, as soon as the door swung open for Turnus and Orleans to leave.

“We have literally two hours until morning classes start,” said Turnus. “You’d think we would have more chill.”

“I already did five laps around the school, so don’t give me that.”

“Coincidentally, that's when the hot princes do their morning runs.”

“ _I_ am the hot prince on his morning run,” Ramsey shook his head. “Anyway, when are you guys going to join me? The sun is just out, other princes run shirtless and you feel less guilt over stuffing your face at breakfast… it’s the _peak_ of bro-bonding.”

Orleans cut in. “We’re joining you for breakfast. That has to count for something.”

“Breakfast… bro-eakfast… brofist?” Turnus frowned. “Brobreakfast.”

“Brofist!” Ramsey offered up a fist, to which the other two instinctively bumped.

If you enjoyed people-watching, the castleteria was best at breakfast. A lot of royals would still be in their pyjamas as they stacked up French toast and Peter Pan-cakes on their plates, and managing conversation was difficult for anyone this early in the morning. This was exactly why Ramsey insisted that he and his friends should always look their best before coming to the Castleteria in the morning -- it was one of his few chances to shine above the other princes.

When breakfast was over, they parted ways - Turnus off to Cross-Cultural References and Literary Allusions, and the other two off to Hero Training.

“I can’t join you guys for lunch,” Turnus said, when the squad regrouped after the one class that they all shared, Kingdom Management. “I was going to check on my advisor.”

“Awww,” Ramsey frowned. “Have fun battling the bureaucracy of Dr Charming!”

~*~

When Turnus got to the office that Dr Charming shared with Professor Knight, another student was just leaving. She took note of him, gave a scrutinising once-over and spoke sharply and stridently. “Dr Charming’s out. Prof Knight’s in, though.”

“Shame, I had questions.”

“Me too, bro. Me too.” The other student seemed visibly distracted. In the most milistic of ways, she was dressed like a prince. Roman regalia, Italian accent. No visible sign of her story was displaced in her dress, but hey, Turnus didn’t display his role externally either.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m the next Emperor Lucius. In the Arthurian Legends.”

“Okay?”

“Literally only found out today. I kind of just want to--” she made grappling hands. “Argh, scream or something. Positively or negatively? You make the call.”

“Alright.”

“So, I guess, I’m okay. Or I will be. Won’t be. Okay. Okay.” She forcefully frowned. “Ablative Charming. Not usually like this.”

Turnus knew other princes were weird, so it was nice to know that sometimes, it was awkward weird. “Turnus Wyllt.” Unless people asked, he never gave his destiny alongside name.

Her eyes widened. “Wyllt? Are you a Merlin? Turnus? Like the one Aeneas so valiantly fought?”

So many questions. Only a quick passing exchange, and he felt already sick of it. Not uncommon, Turnus realised, when talking to princes. “I-- I’m meant to be King Merlin’s son, yeah. No Italians kicking my ass, though.”

“You mean Trojans,” she corrected. “I mean, whatever.”

“... okay,” he darted past her towards the door. He knocked twice, and a firm, warm and friendly voice broke through.

“Well, come on through! Take a seat!”

Pushing open the door, Turnus entered. The office shared by the two advisors was said to be one of the most decorated rooms at Ever After High. The accolades framed on the walls or in the stained-glass cabinets spanned literal centuries. Each name inscribed told a hero’s story, and there were many names. Each name was someone loved, someone deemed worth honouring, someone worthy enough that even students in the 21th century would stop to admire. Turnus’ eyes scanned past them and right at the old face of Professor Knight.

The Professor waved, and gestured towards an empty seat in front of him.

“Hello, sir,” Turnus sat down, and internally cringed at how immediately formal his tone got. “I don’t know if you know me, but I’m Turnus Wyllt. I’m one of Dr Charming’s.”

“I don’t. Wyllt… you must be a Merlin, though you don’t look the part. I know, I’ve met the young lad Mercury already, and you cannot be mistaken for him at all.”

“My destiny is King Merlin’s son in the Princess Mayblossom,” the words coming out of Turnus’ mouth held no emotions. They were cold bricks, industrial and repetitive. “I’m no hero, Professor Knight.”

With that line, the old man shook his head, his face betraying a frown. “Now, now, don’t be like that. A young man like you can always strive to do good. Heroes are self-defined and true to oneself, and who are you, Turnus Wyllt?”

“Uh, I was hoping for less self-reflecting questions and more pragmatic solutions.”

“Well, self-reflection never hurts. Have a peppermint.”

Turnus took a peppermint. He didn’t open the wrapper though, and just slipped the sweet into his shorts pocket.

“So,” continued Professor Knight, “Introduce yourself, Turnus Wyllt.”

“Uh, can I just skip to the part where I ask you the questions?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I’m worried about my grades. My Fairy Point Average has been dropping, and I know for sure that I want to go into higher education.”

“Let me pull up your transcript,” Professor Knight said, and turned on the computer at his desk. “Very admirable, the higher education goal. Several fairytales end up gaining honorary degrees, but unless you’re in a very technical field… what were you thinking of, Mr Wyllt?”

Turnus tucked a strand of purple hair behind his ear. “Applied Mathemagics?”

Within a few taps of the keyboard, Professor Knight had Turnus’ transcript up on the screen. “Well, you have all As in the sciences and mathemagics. I don’t know your worry.”

“My prince classes are dragging me down, Professor. I can barely keep a C.” His voice was short and curt.

“Well, that’s not to worry. You are a legacy. I can’t say admission into a good school would be too difficult.”

“Isn’t that biased?”

“That shouldn’t be too much of a complaint, is it? I mean, if you are concerned,” Professor Knight frowned, “there are other people you can talk to and connect with. There’s a place in BookEnd that’s offered destiny consulting services for years, and it’s become increasingly popular. Getting a slot might be difficult, unless you were referred to one of their trainees.”

He mirrored the frown. “But I don’t want _destiny_ consulting. I just want support for my own life.”

Once Upon A Time, Turnus Wyllt's eyes sparkled.

Magic embedded itself into every element of this world; it fueled the very blood force of fairytales. Life was magic, magic life, and Turnus Wyllt lacked both.

He stared back at the advisor, eyes a dull purple. “I mean, I’m not that helpless.”

“Other fairytales found themselves in a sounder place through destiny consulting.”

“What do you mean by ‘a sounder place’?”

Professor Knight seemed to lack an answer. “Just try it out, it might be beneficial.”

Turnus slumped back into his seat, arms crossed. His legs would have been propped up as well, had that been an acceptable posture for an advisor’s office.

“Right, I’ll give it a shot. But I don’t have much hope and I can’t promise results.”

~*~

The destiny consultant trainee worked in BookEnd. He was exceedingly young, well-dressed, with hair the colour of caramel, and a smile so enigmatic and unfathomable that it struck Turnus with a distinct fear and familiarity.

“Hello,” he said, making no comment as to how Turnus was ten minutes late. “It’s Gabriel Fanfarinet. You can just call me Gabriel.”

“I’m Turnus,” said Turnus.

A lone grey desk rested in the middle of the office. It was neat - every paper was filed away or colour coded with a sticky note.

“Can I interest you in anything? I have coffee, hot cocoa, I know it's only 2pm but there's wine in the back fridge…”

Turnus blinked. “I'm good.”

“Clever,” he smiled in a very calculated manner. “Smart. As princes should do - never accept food or drink from people you don't know, even if they are your storymates.”

“Or, you know, people could stop poisoning and putting potions in things maliciously.”

He received no response.

Gabriel Fanfarinet made himself a drink - an iced coffee by the looks of it. Each move was swift, smooth, and even though the process ate away a few minutes, it was so pleasing to watch that it barely seemed as if any time was wasted.

While all this was happening, Turnus stayed on his feet. _Even if they are your storymates_ , the man had said. Was that an off-handed comment? Or, given that enigmatic smile, very targeted?

“Right, well, we should get started,” Fanfarinet said. “Why haven’t you taken a seat yet?”

“When did you graduate Ever After High? How old are you?”

“Please sit.”

“What did you say your surname was again?”

Gabriel stalled for a bit. “Fanfarinet,” he said, after a confused second. “Why?”

Turnus remembered his own Ambassador Fanfarinet clearly. They only ever had one conversation, but he remembered social media posts, and remembered his name, his hair, and enough quirks to gather some idea of who he was.

“You’re not him.”

“Pardon?”

He gave the name of a boy who he had never talked to.

“Bastion.”

Except once, in Freedom Year. Turnus, so new and fresh off into his fairytale, had introduced himself enthusiastically, only to be met with a glaze so chilly that he never once talked to the other boy again.

“You’re not Bastion Fanfarinet. Where is Bastion Fanfarinet?”

“Sit down, Mr Wyllt.”

He was still standing.

“There is no Ambassador Fanfarinet named Bastion. Are you quite alright?”

“No, not really,” said Turnus. “Look, I don’t really want to have this discussion anymore. I’m going to leave.” He had yet to sit down, so all it took was a turn and a quick close of the door.


	2. A Certain Levity

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“

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_To being with, he is accused of a certain levity..._

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”  
  
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_Professor Knight_ , Turnus wrote in his email to the advisor, _it did not help at all and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Destiny consulting just made me more confused on destiny and what I’m doing with my life._

And he hit send.

It had been three days since the meeting with Gabriel.

Three days, and he hadn’t found a single piece of proof of Bastion Fanfarinet’s existence. The social media pages he thought he followed, or a profile on the school’s email system, or tabloid and newspaper articles written about the upcoming legacies of Ever After High will all blank. The previous Fanfarinet was Jacques -- that he now learned, and the upcoming one was clearly this Gabriel man.

By this point, he couldn’t just dig around, he had to ask around and take destiny in his own hands. On his Mirrorblog, Turnus posted:

**@andturnus**

    hey guys, could you pm me if you know anything about a ‘bastion fanfarinet’? not super urgent but. I feel like im onto smth.

He threw his phone in his bag, and left for his next class, Experimental Fairy Math. Lunch break hadn’t ended yet, but Turnus knew that if he sat around for time to pass by, he’d get too anxious to focus or think.

By the time he made it to the classroom, there was still twenty minutes left to go before class started. Expectedly, Klara Spejl was already in the room, pouring over a textbook. At the sound of Turnus opening the door, she looked up and beamed in her regular way - so warmly, that you’d forget that she was destined to get her heart frozen.

Turnus Wyllt would have probably regarded Klara Spejl as the only prince he liked at this school. She was the daughter of Kai, from the Snow Queen, so in all technicality, she was a commoner. But how could one not look at the grace she carried herself, and how much dignity she commanded, and not think of her as princely? She had all the charm a Prince Charming had, and more. Even the literal talking ravens and crows that frequented the woods by Ever After High would address her by a royal title.

“Your Highness,” he said, and slumped into the seat next to her. “Do you know anything about a Bastion Fanfarinet?”

Klara shook her head. “No. Why?”

“Professor Knight made me go to consulting. I think the guy who I talked to was the Ambassador in my destiny? But like, I feel like that’s wrong, because I don’t remember ever meeting him, but I do remember meeting my ambassador before, who was nothing like him--”

“Consulting? Is that like counselling?”

“I… I don’t even know. I barely had one conversation,” he frowned. “Well, I guess it was worth asking. Maybe my memories are just messed up.”

“So you’re not in counselling. That’s fine. Did you know that mental stress can affect memory and knowledge retention?” Klara said. Her tone was very matter-of-fact, with an under lining of concern. The corners of her eyes pointed down. “What else is in your life? How’s Gladiolus?”

Good questions. “I think Gladiolus is really busy. We’ll probably hang out tomorrow, but I don’t know.”

“No he’s not. He told me yesterday that his week was ‘super chill’, and that he had no major commitments.”

“Why did you ask me then?”

“Politeness.”

“You truly are the prince of small talk,” Turnus let out a small, tired sigh. He would never admit it out loud, but he was often envious of Klara -- how she could always hold a conversation with a person, how she could make anyone feel welcome… anyone except him, really.

Then again, no one could. Not at Ever After High, anyway.

As a student of Ever After High, you were surrounded by the future fairytales of tomorrow. All your coursework, hextra-curriculars, even your friendships, were cultivated carefully in preparation for fulfilling your future role. Even though a rebellion had recently occurred, even though a certain Raven Queen made it so that destiny was effectively null, it wasn’t as if the pressure of being a fairytale had disappeared.

In fact, among certain circles, it was more intense now. To be a fairytale was to be the creme de la creme, the superstars that the whole world will know and fawn over. Destiny was now an unstable podium to build status and reputation from, so the legacy students of Ever After High were becoming more try-hard.

Turnus was, technically, not a legacy. His parents never attended Ever After High, and as far back as he could trace, no one in his family had. A lot of the time, the rules of fairytale society was lost on him. In group conversations, he often felt like he had nothing relevant to say.

When the bell rang for his next class, the first thing Turnus did was check his Mirror Blog to see if anyone had answered his question.

The only replies he got were some well-meaning people asking if he meant ‘Gabriel’. Ramsey had quote-tweeted him, adding in a caption urging for others to “truly show chivalry” and “extend their kindness” by answering Turnus’ question. Still, no substantial replies.

Over the next couple of class periods, the activity and responses on his post waned. By the time he had finally gotten out of class and crashed onto his bed, too tired to do anything else, Turnus had given up hope.

So, naturally, he decided to take a nap.

When he woke up, there was a message. Not a reply, but a _direct_ message.

**@godchildphysician**

    Hi!!! Turnus, I know we've never talked, but I did know a Bastion Fanfarinet. If you're going through anything difficult, if you need a shoulder or someone to talk to, I'm here for you.

**@andturnus**

    im fine lmao. im just kinda curious about him. sounds like a character.

**@godchildphysician**

    He was. I appreciated him a lot, more than one would hexpect. I miss him.

**@andturnus**

    @godchildphysician we should rly meet up and talk abt it then. btw i love your research. and pls tell me more about your boi!!

**@andturnus**

    also not to be weird but i (friend ?) ship this a lot lol. you and this bastion.

**@godchildphysician**

    He's not my "boi". He's his own person and I merely once held a certain appreciation for him.

**@andturnus**

    im sorry airmid valerian youre great and its hella not cool to ship ppl irl

**@godchildphysician**

    Anyway, I have a lot to say. Where should I start?

Turnus halted. How could he ever answer that question, if he knew nothing but the man’s name and a few details he could remember from social media? He couldn’t possibly bombard Airmid Valerian with all the questions he did have, so he limited them to three.

**@andturnus**

    how did you meet him? when was the last time you saw him? what conversations did you do have?

He pressed send. And the message didn’t. Turnus tried again, then once more, but the message remained stubbornly unsent. He checked the router extension in his room, switched to data and back again, and tried replying on his computer. Despite all other utilities functioning, this one message stayed put on his end.

**@andturnus**

    lmao airmid valerian it seems like the universe is conspiring against me.

**@andturnus**

    mirrornet terrible on my end.

The two new messages sent. Might as well try the original one.

It didn’t.

Airmid Valerian responded,

**@godchildphysician**

    I just made myself a coffee.

followed by their room number.

~*~

Without hesitation, Turnus shoved his phone and keys in his pocket, and dashed four flights up the boys’ dormitories stairs to reach Airmid. There was no time to wait for the elevator, and besides, if Turnus didn’t take the steps, Ramsey would probably get on his case for skipping leg day.

Two symbols marked the room that Airmid Valerian shared with Samuel Gulliver: a skull-shaped candle for the former, and an eyeglass for the latter. He knocked twice, and stood back to wait for the door to swing open.

“Come through,” greeted Airmid. They gripped the doorknob with one hand and held a mug of coffee in the other. The handle was shaped like a burning match, and on the mug’s surface were the words ‘it’s lit’, accompanied by a cutesy illustration of a book burning. Airmid Valerian was the next physician in Godfather Death. Already done with highschool-level science, he spent most of his time on the campus of the closest university trying to get a head-start on his destiny. In his room, textbooks laid scattered, and yet another sizeable coffee mug rested on top of a sizeable volume of “Activists, Unequal Healthcare, and Other Revolting Things (Part IV, Edition LI)”.

“We keep forgetting to hang out,” Airmid said, in reference to his roommate. Sam was propped up on his own bed, legs crossed and a bunch of notebooks surrounding him. He waved. Turnus waved back.

The future physician pulled out a chair, but Turnus shook his head. “I’ll take the floor, and a cushion”, so Airmid threw a cushion with a printed cover at him. It was of a Lamb of Fairy Godmother album cover, which Turnus only recognised because Ramsey liked the same band.

“Okay, so my point of being here,” Turnus sat cross-legged on the floor. “Tell me about Bastion Fanfarinet.”

“Where do I start?” Airmid frowned and took a long sip of coffee. “So, the crux of my interactions with him was over the span of two weeks. We travelled across Germany and France together. I once cried in his arms. That’s the abstract summary of it all.”

“I guess that means you have a lot to say? I’m all ears.”

Instead of continuing on, instead of rambling in that way Airmid Valerian was prone to, the future physician was quiet. He was frowning, thinking, and then, without even looking, undid the strap of the watch they wore.

One didn’t have to be rich, or even keep up with notable brands, to recognise what the watch was. It was a Scrollex - seen as one of the finest watches of watches.

“Here,” Airmid said, and dropped it in his lap. “Take a look.”

“It’s really beautiful.” The fine metal, the clockwork. These watches were meant to last generations, meant to exist through centuries. Much like Ever After High, they were legacies of their own. Turnus turned it over in his hands.

On its back face, was an engraving.

_To my son, Bastion Fanfarinet. Happy 16th._

And then, a date.

The date was of only a few months prior, and presumingly of the previous owner’s birthday. With near absolute clarity, the engraving betrayed the existence of a previous owner, who was but sixteen years old.

“Happy Sixteenth, Bastion Fanfarinet,” Turnus repeated it to himself. “And where did you get this?”

“He gave me it. ‘Are you serious?’ I asked, and ‘No catch’, he’d said. It’s mine now -- the only thing that bears that name of Bastion Fanfarinet.”

Turnus felt his heart sink. “But like, that’s beautiful. He literally gave you time. He gave you a memorial.”

He passed the watch back to Airmid, but not without pulling out his MirrorPhone and taking a clear picture of the back of it.

“It’s near solid proof that he existed. All I really needed,” and he laughed nervously. “I thought I was going nuts! No one else remembered him. I’m glad you do. You seem like a trusty source.”

“Well, like any proper scientist, I’m glad you have some peer review right here. Sure, he left me, that I can forgive. Leaving, without any trace of his existence? Something’s up. I have a suspicion who.” He grimaced. Since Airmid hadn’t been making eye contact with anything other than the floor, the angle of his downcast head emphasised his downcast eyes. “It’s not necessary to get into that. Anyway,” he stood up, and offered Turnus a hand to pull him off the floor. “You should get going. I hope I helped, as a doctor should.”

“You did! Lots of thanks, Airmid. One more question, though,” Turnus said, making his way to the door. “Who else knew about him? Did he mention anyone else in his life?”

“He had a childhood friend, in fact. A princess named Pythia?”

~*~

Finding Pythia Adalinda was a breeze. She ran a prolific social media page, talking about what the Student Council was up to, what causes to support, and it was always updated with the latest news in politics. She mirror-blogged so often about what she was up to, that just following her page was enough to track her actions around campus.

So, on a weekday afternoon when she had posted that she was tabling a petition at Ever After High’s main courtyard, Turnus rushed over.

The crowd of signatures flooding in had barely begun, so Turnus approached Pythia at a sparse table. “Hi! Pythia Adalinda! Do you happen to know anything about Basti-”

Her strong, mellow voice broke off the rest of his sentence. "It would be better for you if you put your mind on more important things! Like, the Student Council Bakesale coming up! Or, or, perhaps this protest against the production of love potions in Book End!"

She sliced a flyer between him and her through the air, like a knife, cutting him off.

"Uh, I'm sorry Pythia…? I had a question."

"Politicians provide solutions, not answers." She seemingly caught sight of someone behind Turnus. Pythia pushed past him, carrying her stack of flyers. "It's been so long! Let's talk about--" and soon, she was rife in conversation with someone else.

He pretended to read the flyer, to look less awkward as he stood around the booth, waiting for Pythia to finish her conversation. But the flyer was short, he was done within the minute, so he ended up signing the petition that the table was for.

“Pythia? My question.”

“That’s not what I’m here to answer,” she said, and as mellow as her voice was, it was so cold.

It reminded Turnus very distinctively of another interaction, one from Freedom Year.

The first time Turnus Wyllt saw Bastion Fanfarinet was move-in for Freedom Year. Exiting a sleek carriage car that was stylised like a dragon, Bastion Fanfarinet accompanied Pythia Adalinda up the main steps of Ever After High. The doors of the car opened like a pair of wings, and servants followed the pair, carrying suitcases with them.

His hair was pink-tipped, and within a month, it would cherry blossom into a full pink. The popularity of alternative colours among villains would be cited as the reason (Turnus had heard that because more villains tended to dye their hair, the villain community could order dye and bleach in bulk).

Of course, Turnus already knew Bastion’s name and face. He had checked school records before coming to Ever After High, and decided that he would try his best to make friends with the man who would call him liege. Brutus had been helping Turnus carry his suitcases into Ever After. When Bastion and Pythia passed them by on the steps, Turnus had yearned to reach out, extend a hello, and introduce himself.

He didn’t.

What stopped him was the way Bastion Fanfarinet had walked. He was physically very closed off - his hands were tucked into his blazer pockets, and he kept his gaze straight in front of him, no deviation.

Over the next semester, Turnus would try catch the boy’s attention. Or, at least, he would dream of it. Often times, he would catch sight of Bastion Fanfarinet, often a book in hand or him glaring angrily at his phone. Turnus would keep updated his any of Bastion’s social media, and always felt, for some reason, vindicated when Bastion Fanfarinet was cold enough to scare off any girls fawning over the ambassador’s pretty face.

Still, for some reason, they only managed to have a verbal hexchange once. Bastion Fanfarinet had been in the Li-fairy, his pink hair showing his dark roots, pouring over a book. With no one else around, Turnus Wyllt felt comfortable enough to approach.

“Hi, Bastion Fanfarinet? It’s—”

“I’m sorry, I am really busy right now.” The reply was instantaneous, and voicemail-like. All his enigmatic handsomeness seemed now like an airbrushed magazine.

Turnus had decided then, equally instantaneous, that he would give it another year before talking to the man who would call him liege.

~*~

Immediately after his question was completely ignored by Pythia Adalinda, Turnus felt a distinct sickness in his stomach. He turned away from the table, and felt a sharp pain in his eyes.

 _Oh no_ , he thought, _this was stupid_. Being absolutely brushed off like that shouldn’t be enough to reduce him to tears. The way that the interaction played out made him feel like he wasn’t worth anyone’s time, that no one had the patience for his issues.

When heading back to the dorms, he was suddenly tackled from behind.

"Turnus!" said the source of the tackle.

"AHSHHHFHGJHHHHH," said Turnus. "Gladiolus, what in Ever After--"

“You’ve been a little slow on the hext messages.”

“I am so drained,” Turnus shrugged off his boyfriend’s hug. “Listen, I’ve done so much searching, and this is the only thing I got. Wait…"

He took his phone out of his back pocket and started searching through his gallery.

Gladiolus stood there expectantly, until Turnus pulled up the one picture he took of the back of the Scrollex. The mermaid frowned. “This is a lot to get worked up over.”

"I don't think so. You see-" His screen turned a navy and vibrated from an incoming call. _Bro-tus_ , read the contact name. "Wait, hexcuse me… hey bro."

“Turnus! Turnus!” Brutus Wyllt’s voice rang loud and clear through the minute phone speaker. “Can you believe it’s about two weeks out?”

“I’ll be there. I’m really busy right now.”

“Well, that’s just how school feels. Wait until you’re working! Sofia and I send our best regards!”

Sofia Wares was his brother Brutus’ fiance, and within two weeks, married to Brutus. She was smart, so smart that Turnus was sure that she only gained their mother’s approval from her resume alone.

“Anyway, we’re just booking some things last minute. Any alcohol requests?”

“I’d like mead,” he said. A very quintessential high-fantasy drink, and something that Turnus would definitely regard as ‘his aesthetic’. “And a break.”

“We’ll try get you out of school early! You deserve one! Anyway, goodbye for now, love you, lil bro!” Brutus hung up before Turnus could get in another sentence.

Gladiolus waited for Turnus to put his phone back in his pocket before speaking. “But Turnus, I was going to ask - did you ever agree to the camping trip with the boys?”

“Tell Ramsey and Orleans I can’t, my brother is getting married and I want time off school. Just a week.”

“But a week here is like an eternity! You’ll miss so much.”

"I don't think he gets it. Dude's never attended Ever After High," Turnus shoved the phone back in his pocket. "As far as I know, no one in my family has. I wish I had a full list of people who have, though."

"The school archives."

Turnus' face lit up. "We have school archives? Are they accessible?"

“Yeah, they’re located near the Vault of Lost Tales in the Lifairy--”

"Okay, neat. In that case, I'm getting an early night! Bye Gladi, all the love," and Turnus continued on his original route, in a sprint this time.


	3. The Gods Had Condemned

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
That night, asleep, Turnus found himself in a moving train. He was walking through the aisle, and his glaze travelled into each compartment, only for his vision to be met with static when he would discern the contents within. His motion stopped, and then he was sitting in one of the compartments. A body, with a blank expression and cherry blossom hair, was staring at him.

“My liege,” said the Bastion Fanfarinet in Turnus’ dream.

The world outside of the train was blurred.

Turnus looked more closely at the Bastion Fanfarinet with the blank expression, and reached out a hand towards him. If only the boy’s facial features could be sharper, if only he could dial up the resolution, Turnus thought, as he continued reaching out, only for his hand, and the rest of him, to phase through Bastion Fanfarinet.

There was no more train scenes, no more Bastion Fanfarinet, as Turnus was propelled into his next dream of the night.

~*~

When he woke up, Turnus shook his head, shaking out his hair that was stuck to his back with sweat, until it cloaked his shoulders instead.

Once he was fully cognisant and functional, Turnus ended straight to the archives room Gladiolus mentioned.

It was simultaneously pedantically perfect and an utter mess. Turnus didn’t know where to start. He didn’t even know what he wanted to look for, or what would even indicate proof of Bastion Fanfarinet’s once-existence.

He decided, at the very least, to search for his “current” ambassador, the man by the name of Gabriel Fanfarinet.

Half an hour in, and his search was futile. Turnus Wyllt temporarily contemplated whether to leave and take a coffee break, but heard the door to the room open.

In stumbled in an adult. They appeared to be in their early twenties, with hair green as moss and a nervousness in their step. Turnus could immediately tell, given their white lab coat and intelligent air, that this person was a witch.

“Hello?” he said.

The witch stopped in their step. “Oh,” they frowned. “I didn’t know that students actually cared about this place. I’m Utility Fei, I do administrative work here.”

They held out a gloved hand. Turnus looked at it.

“I’m not going to shake your hand,” he said, then realised that sounded rude. “I mean, you’re wearing gloves, and you’re handling like, archival stuff, so I assume it’s to keep the books safe. I’m not dirtying your gloves.”

“Smart,” they retracted the hand. “I actually only wear these for aesthetic purposes. What are you up to?”

“I’m… I’m trying to find some stuff, but this place isn’t super organised.” He gestured to a small mess in the corner, and some medium sized messes around the archives room. Files not the folders, folders with only one file, mislabelled folders and files printed on the wrong sort of paper.

“Guilty as charged,” they raised their arms defensively. “But hey, give a guy some credit, it’s already difficult enough managing the MirrorNet databases for this school, nevermind organising things in the physical realm.”

He blinked. "Physical realm?"

“This place. The material world. I know, I know, the World of Ever After is in the digital age, things get uploaded onto the MirrorNet, that’s how the school keeps track of everything… but systems break down and everything is so ephemeral… it’s nice having things on paper,” the fae turned away, almost as if they were talking more to themself than to Turnus. “What are you here for? I didn’t think statistics would interest the students this much.”

“I’m searching for someone. I think he’s missing.”

“Missing?”

“Disappeared. Fallen off the face of the world. Perhaps a cryptid?”

“Fascinating! Maybe I can’t find your missing person, but I could probably tell you the most popular person of this month. Perhaps the couple of the month?” asked Utility. They sat themselves by a mountain of files, cracked open their backpack, and pulled out a snack.

Turnus blinked. “Thank you, I guess. That’s not really important to me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m really sure.” He was very much starting to doubt the helpfulness of this witch.

“Sorry I couldn’t help,” the witch’s words didn’t seem too genuine. Perhaps it was because they were eating while speaking. The snack in question was matcha Pucky. “I can at least offer you food? I don’t think I caught your name, either.”

Like a fool, he complied. “Turnus Wyllt. I’m a student here.”

He leaned over to take a stick of Pucky, and felt a force pushing him back. It was the same repulsive force he felt with fae: a weak magnet, a light push, one that needed a study pull to counteract.

“You’re not human.”

The prince couldn’t detect magic -- that was a skill that required magic in itself. But he knew the effects of magic, and taught himself how to recognise it through objective means and sharp senses. This was one of such incidents.

“Um.”

“You’re not human,” he repeated. Things were starting to make sense. The little quirks, their constant snacking. “If I’m guessing right, you’re a changeling.”

They blinked.

And their eyes darted from side to side.

“Okay, fine, then explain this.” And they snapped their fingers, and in their hand, appeared a bouquet of rhododendron flowers. With another snap, they disappeared. Turnus could tell, from observation alone, that it was a witch’s spell performed, not the fae equivalent.

In defense, Turnus threw up his arms to shield from any stray flying magical particles. “I don’t know,” he said, once the effects were gone. “Do you have an explanation?”

“Simple. Witchcraft is learnt, fae magic is inherited-- oh, alright, I see,” Utility frowned, and dejectedly took another Pucky to munch on. “You got me there. Now you have me monologuing on my life and tragic backstory and why I am a changeling masquerading as a witch. Pucky?”

“No, not from you,” said Turnus. “Seriously though, why are you doing this?”

“Why I’m a witch this round of changeling-hood? Very good question. I can get you a good answer as well!” they said, finishing off a Pucky in two bites. “Fae magic is innate. Fairies are composed of pure magic, after all, so doing magic is basically on par with breathing. It’s hexactly what you’re put on this world for. You get me?”

“In theory, yes. In practise, no.”

“Well, basically, there’s an ease to doing fae magic,” they grinned. It was unnerving -- too much teeth, not enough seriousness. “But witchcraft… that’s a human arcane art. It’s a skill - you practise, you train, your ability manifests from your efforts. No nepotism. Only hard work.”

“Easy for you to say. I don’t have any magic.”

“Don’t be like that! If you had magical parents or something, I’m sure--”

“I do.”

“Oh. Well, my point is, fae magic is really archaic. It’s stagnant, it lacks the innovation and adaptability of the human arcane arts. So being a witch, studying to get where you are, just feels fundamentally more worthwhile.”

This conversation was starting to make him feel sick. This witch-changeling-whatever, going on about their own struggle with magic, choosing to pick up a form of magic that was completely barred to him, for fun, skipping over his comments.

Utility was out of Pucky now, so they pulled another snack from their bag.

“Anyway. You get me. Powerful magic runs in family lines, but you get skilled mages from anywhere. Too much nepotism in fairykind. Eugh.”

“You’re a fae.”

“Yeah, but I’m also a changeling. I love humanity just as much… almost certainty more.”

Turnus was frowning. “Not necessarily. My parents are both mages. I’m magicless.”

“I mean, yeah, I guess, genetics can be weird, but if you try--”

“No, you’re not getting me. Here, wait, do you have any magical items in the bag of yours?”

“I have a healing potion. A few spell scrolls. Oh, this cursed amulet! It gives you the spell of feather falling. Fun stuff.”

“Great. Try putting it on me.”

Utility decided that it would be more fun to throw the amulet around Turnus’ neck like a game of hoops. Instead of landing perfectly around his neck, however, the amulet deflected like a boomerang and slammed into the fae’s windpipe.

“OOF. What-- I-- how-- owww.” They winced. “Where’s… where’s that healing potion…”

“Do you see what I mean? My mother and father put me through years of private tutors, years of private witch doctors… we’ve found nothing.”

“Don’t you think it’s amazing? You’re devoid of the one power, the one energy that literally builds our world, and yet-- magic-less, you have this strange unique perspective,” they puzzled aloud. “It’s like your own brand of omniscience.”

“That’s… optimistic,” Turnus said. “I guess. I just kind of live life. Do my best. That sort of thing.”

“Well, then, chin up, Young Sisyphus. You’re bound to get somewhere. What were you looking for, again?”

“This guy named Bastion Fanfarinet.”

There was a brief flicker of fear across the changeling’s face. “I’m sorry?”

“Bastion Fanfarinet. I think he was meant to be the Ambassador Fanfarinet in the Princess Mayblossom. Listen, Utility, you’re a scientist, aren’t you?”

“I don’t wear this white coat for nothing, kid.”

“Great. Can I ask a question? Can someone… just.... disappear?”

“Maybe.”

“You must have a hypothesis right? Or even a conjecture?”

That seemed to persuade them to open up a bit. “I guess. Tell me, what’s the most iconic trio of literal animals you see around the school?”

“The Three Billy Goats, of course.”

“Well, I see the Three Little Pigs. When Raven Queen walked through the school gates at the start of her second year, it was a little pig that told everyone around her to run.”

That was not how Turnus remembered it.

“So, how can you be sure your view of reality is the one true reality, when these discrepancies exist?”

“That’s one incident. There’s bound to be more.”

"Oh, of course there's more. Take legacies, for instance. Something popular... common... I used to use the Snow Queen, or Beauty in the Beast as an example, but I can't really now," they frowned. "Look, this is kinda touchy and I don’t think I have the permission to continue talking about this example."

Turnus frowned. He didn’t seem too sold on what the changeling was saying.

“But don’t trust me, kid. As you said, it’s all merely conjecture.”

“You can help me, right? Help me find this one person."

It was Utility’s turn to frown. “I… look, kid. Do you really want to have this conversation?”

“Why not?”

"I don't know - questioning this sort of stuff always felt like a slippery slope to me. One day, you're working out how the world functions and sustains the system. The next, you start-"

They stopped, and hit Turnus with a look that shook him to the bone. It was a look that had seen things - that knew things - things obscured by years of dust and ashes and tucked away with suspensions of disbelief and plot holes.

It was compelling, and he knew immediately what he had to say then.

"I want the truth," Turnus said. "I want reality, Utility. I want clarity, I want understanding. This is a world of riddles and cute little anecdotes, it's all fun and sweet and all, but it offers none of the things I crave for. I don't care if it's dangerous - I want to know."

“So only truth will set you free,” Utility took out another snack -- this time a granola bar, and took a bite. “Here’s the truth, and it’s like science. You will research and study and struggle and never reach an absolute end goal. The process is tedious and the answer is not satisfying.”

“And you’re still dedicating your human life to science?”

“There’s a favourite quote of mine: the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart,” the fae said. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“I’ll take the struggle. Over apathy, I’ll always choose struggle.”

“Fine by me, kid.”

~*~

Later that night, in a studio apartment not far from BookEnd, a changeling witch sat at a computer, with their head lying a distance from their keyboard, for they were waiting for everything to properly connect.

“Couldn’t you invented something a little better than the Turnip Princess Router? Eugh, sTORy Project Incorporated, _odi et amo_...”

There was no need to dig through a Sword Document, or a binder full of jotted-down keys, to know the IP to access the website they had in mind. More so than any other fae, changelings knew how to grapple with numbers.

And these numbers, Utility believed, were worth memorising.

On their screen displayed an Internet Relay Chat. Or as fairytales who think themselves too self-important would call it, a MirrorNet Curds-and-Re-whey Chat.

 _Houston, we have a problem_ , Utility typed in. Their screenname displayed next to their message: **Dick Feiynman**.

 _This isn’t pucking Texas, Utility_. The response was instantaneous, coming from a screenname that read ‘ **Haus of Boss** ’.

 **Dick Feiynman** : Hey, I’ll have you know that I graduated top of my class—you know how the saying goes. I have news. Will this news get me a promotion?

 **Haus of Boss** : Unlikely.

 **Dick Feiynman** : Ah well, I have centuries to make an upward climb in the Fairytale Authorities. Okay, alright, so point is, I just had someone ask about a vapourisation. Sure, whatever. Such suspicions usually disappear if there’s no tangible proof of the person.

 **Haus of Boss** : Your concern?

 **Dick Feiynman** : Strange kid. Literally magicless. Not in the way you would think. Any common person can pick up and use a magical item. Not him. Any common person can approach a fae - you know, pure magic beings. Not him. I’d argue, in fact, upon observation, he’s not magic-less. He’s anti-magic.

 **Haus of Boss** : Explain.

 **Dick Feiynman** : You know how charge works. A neutral object is attracted to a positive object. A neutral object is attracted to a negative object. You can’t get a neutral object repulsed by either a positive object or a negative object… I don't know where I’m going with this. Laws of Fae-ysics or whatever.

 **Haus of Boss** : Hmm.

 **Dick Feiynman** : I worked in security once upon a time! I learnt how we set up systems like these… how we account for discrepancies. The assumption is that everyone is intrinsically, inherently magical. The only thing that splits us into a spectrum is how well we can control for this magic. What do we have in this case? Someone who has added an entirely new independent vector to the current linear space we operate in! I’m concerned… he said his doctors don’t even know what’s up. Do you think they’ve published papers? I’ve got to peer review this stuff...

 **Haus of Boss** : Did you get a name?

 **Dick Feiynman** : Turnus Wyllt. He didn’t give a destiny, though.

 **Haus of Boss** : We’d find him in the system. You know science. Take the outliers and control for them. In this case, control him.

 **Dick Feiynman** : How?

 **Haus of Boss** : It’s simple. You catch flies with honey, and princesses with kidnapped princes.

 **Dick Feiynman** : I’m not following.

 **Haus of Boss** : We need him on our side. We’ll feed information. We build trust. Feiynman, get this Deep MirrorNet key down on a strip of paper. I will private message you his mailing address.

Within fifteen minutes of the hexchange, Utility had prepared the bait.

The envelope contained two strips of paper. One was a message, made entirely from cut-out newspaper words and letters. The other, also made from cutouts, was a Deep MirrorNet key.

_Get yourself onto the Deep MirrorNet. Key attached._


	4. Middle of the Public Square

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
There was a particular view of the Deep MirrorNet that Turnus held. It was the place of Rose Red Rooms and Cannibal Witch Circles and ways of acquiring illegal magical substances. People tended to their vices, solicited illicit activities, and in general, were unsavoury.

So when he saw the envelope slipped under his door, with his name, and the note, he couldn’t hear his thoughts over the pounding of his heart.

Did this have anything to do with Bastion Fanfarinet?

Whatever it was, Turnus would take the risk. Truth was risky, truth was struggle, as the weird fae in the archives had said. But how was he going to get onto the Deep MirrorNet? Only villains would know, he assumed.

Besides, if this envelope held knowledge, he needed it. That day in the Archives, he could find no trace of Gabriel Fanfarinet.

It was Sunday morning, and he decided to eat breakfast alone that day. The castleteria was crowded enough that you’d have had to share a table with someone you didn’t know. Chances were, the prince that Turnus saw exiting Professor Knight’s office was holding down a table with a spare seat.

“Hey. You’re the emperor girl,” Turnus said, making his way over. “Uh, let me guess, villain?”

“Villain,” Ablative confirmed. “Seat’s free, go ahead.”

“Great. I had a question. So, do villains… get IT services or something? Other princes won’t be helpful.”

“You’d be surprised. Villains are very empress-ive,” Ablative said. “Did you know that there’s villain grants and villain trust funds and villain scholarships and villain—everything, really.”

“So that’s how cartoon villains get their funding. Makes sense.”

“Let me get to the point. We even get our own IT people, since heroes worry villains are installing malware, and villains worry that heroes install like… I don’t know, tracking devices, so it’s better for us all to have villain-destined nerds, right?”

“I see.”

“Raider Espouse is a genius, and so helpful, I can’t believe he’s a villain legacy.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but, it’s different. I’m a villain role for wanting taxation without representation. He’s a villain role for kidnapping and cannibalism.”

“This really took a turn,” Turnus said. “Listen, I don’t have the time to end up murdered. I still haven’t bought my brother a wedding gift.”

Nevertheless, Turnus found himself making his way to the villain underground later that day. By villain underground, we were talking literally. When the school day was over, villains would often gather and hang out in the empty classrooms in the dungeons. For some, it suited “their aesthetic”, and for others, they were just too lazy to find a spot to sit and hang in the more crowded parts of school. Here was a microcosm dedicated to their group alone.

Granted, the villains had a system going. Some would bring video games, and host tournaments that lasted hours. There was an area dedicated to studying and homework, and having other villains nearby meant being able to practise some villainous skills, such as cheating off each other’s homework.

Dressed in sky blues and cream colours, Raider Espouse ran his IT help room. With his thick rimmed glasses and soft voice, he seemed glaringly out-of-place.

With unease, Turnus Wyllt approached the station. “Hi. Not a villain, I just need help.”

The other boy pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, and eyed Turnus with scrutiny. “Alright, that works with me. Raider Espouse. Next Robber Bridegroom in the Robber Bridegroom.”

Turnus’ face showed no emotion when the story was mentioned.

“Oh, okay, so I guess you haven’t heard of it. You’re lucky, I wish I didn’t either,” he said, in a voice with a concentrated pang of sadness.

“Ablative said there was cannibalism and kidnapping in it. But like, same with Ginger Breadhouse’s role, and she’s one of the nicest people in this school.”

“Ablative Charming… is she here? She’s new to all this, and she said some royally nice words to me. Said that heroes are self-defined! Maybe I could also be a hero one day? Maybe more than just an IT guy. Sorry, I’m rambling! What did you need help with?”

“Uh, the Deep MirrorNet? I have a key for some place on it, not sure what to do with it.”

“Oh, fun! What for? Is that private? Sorry, I won’t pry. Nice place, the Deep MirrorNet, as long as you avoid the weird places. Be careful on there, will you?”

Turnus placed his MirrorBook on Raider’s desk. “Yeah, I guess. Thank you.”

“Alright,” the hacker took a harddrive from a box filled with them, and got working. “For starters, you’ll need sTORy.”

“My story is the Princess Mayblossom.”

“No, like S-T-O-R-Y. It’s also known as The Turnip Princess Router. It’s not a perfect acronym, we don’t really know why.” With the ease of a few keystrokes, he was prepping the laptop ready for accessing the Deep MirrorNet. “You said you were already given a key?”

Turnus pulled the envelope out from his pocket.

“No, no, don’t give me that. It’s probably private. I just want you to know what you need to do with it. There’s a baby-blue binder on one of the shelves, can you bring it over?”

Once the binder was fetched and laid in front of him, Raider cut to a point halfway through it to lists and lists of handwritten Deep MirrorNet keys. “Let’s try getting onto some of the fun sites on the Deep MirrorNet.”

“Fun?”

“The Deep MirrorNet is just everything that can’t be indexed by a search engine, right? So if Woogle can’t find it, it’s the Deep MirrorNet.”

With a few more keystrokes, Raider was in. “Look, this is such a neat place,” he gestured to the screen.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a support community forum. A lot of people can’t really air their issues on the normal MirrorNet. They might get brigaded, they might be organising protests and don’t want to be tracked, so they find community here. It’s kind of neat, really,” he took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sweater. “Reminds me this place, actually. Among the villains.”

Turnus looked around. The hacker was right. In these dungeons, what he saw was cohesion and collaboration.

“I’m not a bad guy. I really, really try not to be a bad guy. Anger management courses, talking with counsellors, everything. I didn’t want the role of villain, but hey, these people call me their brother and actually treat me like a normal person… and they’re normal people too. Just luck of the draw, I guess.”

“I guess. I’m sorry,” Turnus said. He didn’t know whether to comfort Raider or not, the guy just seemed to be venting to himself. “I don’t really feel that way around my fellow princes, so this is kind of new to me.”

“The best thing to do is help people, I think. That’s why I’m their IT guy. Everyone has something going on, the reason why we lash out is because we see no other option,” Raider unplugged the harddrive from the computer. “Here, everything should work. No charge for this, but if you want, I’d really like for you to pass the favour forward.”

Turnus left the dungeons with his laptop back in his bag, the envelope in his pocket and tension in his chest.

~*~

Orleans was out at a meeting, Ramsey had a midterm on Monday that they hadn’t studied properly for, so Turnus knew neither of his friends would bother him. He checked his phone, sent Gladiolus a heart emoji, and prompted decided that the best thing to do for the rest of the day was to bury himself in his room.

sTORy was working fine on his browser, but he daren’t open up and access the key just yet.

He had to make like Utility and think like a scientist.

A notebook was easily lost and his handwriting was atrocious. Microsoft Sword documents were impossible for him to organise.

Blogs… proper blogs, with lengthy paragraphs of text and an author's bio in the sidebar, in Turnus' mind, was a lost art. If he was willing to curate an RSS feed of people whose thoughts he would gladly read in paragraph form, then those paragraphs must be well-written and meaningful.

He guessed he was going to join the bloggers he loved in restoring this art.

Opening up some blogging software, he got started.

Three hours later, while Turnus was in the middle of working how whether he liked the look of 11px or 12px text more, and which specific shade of pastel purple he wanted to use for the text, Orleans burst into the room. “It’s Sunday! The weekend’s over! Where have you been? In here? All day?”

“Busy.”

“Did you hext Gladiolus? Have you eaten dinner?”

“Still busy.”

“He’s your boyfriend. And you’re only human!”

“That’s fine,” Turnus lowered the lid of his laptop. “Can we order in? Get Ramsey, get Gladiolus, invite a few other people.”

Orleans pursed his lips. “It’s a school day tomorrow… I mean… I guess we can. We’re not going to be seeing you next week, anyway.”

~*~

That evening, Gabriel Fanfarinet was waiting for a knock on his door. He had prepared tea and put pasties out already, and was arranging the books on his small bookshelf in an order that made him look clever and learned.

He had put away the last volume - a copy of The Prince -, when the knock came.

Lanius Nightshade was on his doorstep, in his human form. Behind him, was the Princess Consort of Queen Adalinda.

“Gabriel? Gabriel, we need to talk.”

“Come through,” Gabriel said, opening the door to his place and beckoning towards the living room. “There’s tea.”

“Tea is perfect! I got your message. And you got mine, or else we wouldn’t be here, ready to talk about things,” Lanius said, stepping in.

Gabriel had prepared two chairs for them to sit on, and he was going to sit on a magic-beans-bag, but Lanius immediately dived for the magic-beans-bag.

It was still surreal to him, that Gabriel was able to host a Grim Reaper and a Princess Consort in his house, one of them being a fairytale legacy, and the other married to one. It was still surreal that he himself was a fairytale legacy. He poured the two tea, and sat down on the remaining chair.

Lanius was the first to speak. “You still remember Bastion, and for good measure. You and… you and Airmid both. And you understood that what happened with the Merlin kid almost could have violated that.”

Weeks prior, Gabriel had signed a binding magical contract that forbade him from speaking of Bastion Fanfarinet again. What had happened in his office… had he even admitted to Bastion’s existence, would have disrupted the conditions of said contract. Gabriel assumed that Airmid had a similar contract going. The upstart of a physician liked truth so much, that they would have probably told the entire world about their care for Bastion Fanfarinet if they weren’t bound otherwise.

“I’d be lying if I said you weren’t the only one who informed me of this discrepancy!” Lanius took a sip of tea. Human form was the right choice, the reaper thought, for this was good tea.

“Pythia too. My daughter knows,” said Princess Consort Adalinda.

“Of course!” Lanius made a mental note to ask Gabriel what tea he used. “No one knew Bastion Fanfarinet as well as the Adalindas. The boy told me that himself. Without the Adalindas, I couldn’t have possibly carried out the process.”

The concept is simple. If Lanius Nightshade hadn’t been doing this for centuries, you’d think he had lifted it right out of _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. Orwell called the process “vapourisation”, and that is the term that will be used.

Vapourisation is cutting someone from existence. It is removing them from newspaper records, taking down social media posts, eradicating every possible image one could have of the person in question. One can’t exactly erase all memories, sure, but memories are tainted by nostalgia and cannot be trusted in general. Take away proof, and you will take that person out of the world.

It was what Lanius Nightshade had done to every single godchild of his.

And under Bastion Fanfarinet’s own request, it was what he had done to Bastion.

“There is no way Pythia has compromised the situation,” spoke Princess Consort Adalinda.

“We would never think of accusing Pythia,” Gabriel said.

“That’s not the point!” Lanius cut in. “I’m upset, I wish I knew that I needed to account for this. As far as we know, we don’t have any knowledge of Turnus interacting with Bastion before. Even _significant_ relationships are affected by vapourisation, and this wasn’t one.”

He tried to take another sip of tea, but realised he had finished. Gabriel refilled the cup, and let Lanius talk on.

“So, someone got into contact with me, said that they had a hypothesis why this is all, as the kids say, wack. We’re dealing with an anomaly on our hands.”

“What is it?”

“Turnus Wyllt isn’t magical.”

“I know,” Gabriel said. “I read his file. That’s why he’s at Ever After High. His parents had very little hope that he could get a job as a wizard if he couldn’t do magic, so… princehood it was.”

Lanius frowned. “See, that’s the thing. You don’t need to come from a line of mages to practise magic. That’s not what I mean, though! Okay, think about it this way. If I gave you a pair of seven league boots, in twenty-one steps you could walk five hundred miles, and in another twenty-one, you could walk five hundred miles more.”

“So I can use a pair of seven league boots appropriately.”

“Theoretically, if I gave Turnus Wyllt a pair of seven league boots and had him walk twenty-one steps, how far do you think he could travel?”

“Five hundred miles?”

“The average stride length is thirty inches! With twenty one steps, he’d travel… uh, roughly… twenty times thirty,” Lanius paused for a moment. “That’s about six hundred inches, so fifty feet.”

“Why are we using imperial? Herr Nightshade, I can’t visualise this.”

“Fifty feet to your five hundred miles. The boots are defunct for him. That’s what I mean when I say magicless - it’s not that he can’t become a wizard, he’s just functionally incapable of using fairytale magic at all.”

Gabriel took a moment to process all of this. “Alright,” he said, still not having processed much of it at all. “What are the higher-ups hexpecting us to do about this?”

“I don’t know what the Authorities want, and frankly, I don’t really care what they want. But Gabriel, do you know what I see? I see a boy who needs our support,” Lanius said. “I think you should reach out. Keep up this consulting thing.”

“I can try. I’ll email him tonight?”

~*~

In the middle of an intense Monopoly game, an email notification lit up on Turnus’ phone. The title was simple: merely the word ‘Consultation’.

He decided that he’d reply tomorrow. Right now, he had a bank to manage and money to win.


	5. Futile and Hopeless Labour

|  | 

“

|  | 

_They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---  
  
He dreamt of Bastion Fanfarinet again. He didn’t remember the context of Bastion in the dream, just the cherry blossom hair and creased blazers and tired brown eyes. By the time Turnus made it to the Castleteria with Ramsey and Orleans for breakfast, all thoughts on the dream dissipated.

Right after Monday classes ended, Turnus headed to the library and buried himself there. Several things happened.

Firstly, he managed to reply to Gabriel’s email, and they had enough of a back and forth exchange to properly set a time. He still had roughly ten days before he had to head off to his brother’s wedding, so they arranged for Thursday after-school.

“I know my behaviour was unhexpected,” Turnus sent in his email. “But I’m willing to talk.”

The second thing that Turnus did was finally get on the Deep MirrorNet. The key led to a forum in which people shared archives and archives of magical artefact bidding results, and images of some of the artefacts in question. In the comments of each item, people debated at length about history and purpose, and how dangerous some could be. One particular user was insistent that a lot of the artefacts were merely decoys - their magic disabled and they served instead to disguise large sums of money traded between wizards.

What a rabbithole this was. Unrelated to what Turnus had hoped, but it was intriguing.

He spent hours scouring through the financial documents, and the history of magical artefacts trade between collectors. In his mind, a narrative was forming.

But as a source, how reliable was this webpage? Barely. It was the Deep MirrorNet, anyone could put things on there. He had to cross reference and check, find things that matched with what he was seeing from official sources, and information that would be posted on the Surface MirrorNet.

The collection of magical artefacts that was prominent in the news were the von Schonwerth’s treasures, retrieved recently from an underwater cave. Mages from research institutions all over were purchasing these artefacts to study. Very few scientific papers had been published, and the items were put on display in their institution’s museums to attract tourists.

Either way, something shady seemed to be going on. It gave Turnus an idea for his first post.

_Magical artefacts: definitely a money laundering scheme._

He worked on it until evening fell, and Ramsey sent him a concerned text-- “you weren’t at dinner? Are you okay????”.

“Wait, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Turnus read over his post one last time to check for grammatical errors, and hit [publish](https://everafterhighfandom.fandom.com/wiki/Turnus_Wyllt%27s_Mirror_Blog/Veritas).

~*~

How he missed the thrill of writing.

The next post he wrote was an opinion piece, one dissecting why “Author legacies” should still exist. Why was Johannes Kit Andersen still around, for instance? Was it imperative that the descendants of the Grimm Brothers ran the school, or could a scholar in their works do the same?

Ramsey tweeted a link to his “spicy take”, and it became a hit.

More importantly, however, by all the traffic driven to Turnus’ “spicy take”, people were stumbling upon his other article.

Conspiracy theorists at Ever After High are many. Conspiracy theorists that actually cite proper sources are few.

Well, if he had a brand to build, it couldn’t merely be “Untitled Blog”. Even a temporary title would be better than that. So Turnus named the blog ‘Veritas’, the Latin word for ‘truth’. He’d seen the word in many mottos of academic institutions, and it would serve as a fitting placeholder.

Turnus started work on his next article immediately, and published it within the day. From bringing a second notebook to classes to write in when spelletronics were banned, from using the gap walking in between classes to note ideas down on his phone, and bringing his lunch with him into the Lifairy to work, he managed. He wrote with a vigour - more energy than he had expended into a single piece of schoolwork… more energy than even his meticulously pre-planned Damsels and Dragons campaigns.

‘An investigation into mental health services for villain students, and the effects of intergenerational trauma’ was the title, and the inspiration was that one trip he had made previously to the dungeons.

Right after publishing it, comments overflowed in, like a magical bowl of porridge.

Too many statistics was the general consensus of the comments, and not enough talk with individual people. The readers wanted the human perspective, anecdotal proof… Turnus had never been regarded as a villain in his life, and that was something that merely academic papers and acute observations of other people could not provide. He needed to interview.

“Ablative, can you do me a favour?” he asked when he saw her at the Castleteria again.

And the prince made his way to the Dungeons. “Raider, I need, like, non-computer related help.”

The only time in which he could coordinate with the two was Thursday after school. That would interfere with his meeting with Gabriel.

He had never felt more alive at Ever After High, than when he was running this blog.

~*~

    Dear Mr Fanfarinet,

    

    Is it possible to push the meeting back a few days? Something came up. Apologies for the late warning.

    

    Respectfully,

Turnus.

    Hi Turnus,

    

    Sure. How is late Sunday afternoon?

    

    \- Gabe

    Dear Mr Fanfarinet,

    

    Great. It works.

    

    Sincerely, Turnus.

~*~

He published the interview early Friday morning.

It became Turnus’ most popular blog post instantly. He gauged that a lot of the interest for the article was mostly due to Ablative Charming’s charisma: how her well-spoken remarks made her points and experiences clear to the audience.

“I’ve never felt more cool in my life!” she hext-messaged Turnus.

“Do you think I could only just offer my services to fellow villains? They’re the ones without access to IT support…” was something Turnus got in response from Raider. “You’re still welcome to get your computer checked up, though!”

It was a theme that resonated and struck with a lot of people -- mental health, intergenerational trauma --, and through the eyes of villains, more poignantly highlighted.

The system perpetuates. That was the point of the post.

 _But why? Who benefits?_ was the natural step into the next post.

Turnus got researching. He found some articles published by actual (!!!) academics, and set to emailing them.

The theme of intergenerational trauma was weighing down on him like a millstone around his neck.

He thought of his father. How Dr Wyllt would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, how his father would wrestle like Gilgamesh with his internal clock, and how the pain could neither be slept off or fully magicked away.

They kept Turnus’ room on the opposite side of the house, but even so, the screams phased through the walls like malevolent spirits. When Turnus was young, Brutus would have been off at boarding school, and it was him in the house, him alone in his room, nightly terrors echoing.

It did result in cherished childhood memories. The three of them would gather in the living spaces, and cook up late-night early morning pancakes, or mahjouba, Algerian crepes. Turnus’ own circadian never seemed to get as messed up as his father’s would from this interrupted sleep.

This continued throughout his teenagehood, and he assumed - even with his parents empty-nested, it would still happen now. Older, he could only feel a deep sense of sympathy for his old man. Was this PTSD, and if so, what sort of things had he faced? Turnus could still remember how his father’s eyes always seemed to glow during those nights.

 _I wonder if I hexperienced intergenerational trauma in the same way as the villain students_ , he wondered, then shook his head and brushed the thought aside. He was busying himself with this blog post, and was set on redirecting his thoughts at it.

Still, with each new source he read, Turnus just felt his heart sinking. With each re-read of conversations from villainous students, with all the ample evidence that so much could be fixed with some money and compassion made one thing clear.

This was intentional.

Was Ever After High not the perfect place to brew villainy? Throw in disdain from peers, add a dash of lower amounts of academic support. The base of the potion was already the curse of being a teenager - being at your most emotionally vulnerable.

Trapping these kids in these cycles of terrible mental health, producing a direct track to their antagonistic futures… what was this all for? Futile, futile, all of this was futile. All these stories were written down, all these stories played out at least half-a-dozen times by now. People -- legacies and nonlegacies alike -- knew the rules. Don’t doubt the third son. Help out animals in need. Above all, be kind and industrious.

What was the system proving? It was preaching one thing, then practising another on literal children who had the malfortune of being born to villains (who had the malfortune of being born to villains -- how cyclic).

Literal children? Turnus was their age. He stepped out of his seat and started pacing the room. Villainous students were _literal children_. Before the children of villains knew the Periodic Fable, they knew that the world hexpected nothing good of them.

Cyclic-- this was all cyclic. With mental health an underdressed issue in the villain community, with hurt villain parents raising hurt villain children, with that hurt being perpetuated on and on, and the symptoms of it, such as children lashing out or engaging in illicit activities being used to demonise them even further...

This wasn’t just cyclic, it was spiral. Spiraling out: the original source of hurt was long gone, there’s no more sense of center. Spiraling in: it was feeling dense and escapable.

What is it… the greater purpose behind all of this? Why did the World of Ever After curse people to live out fairytales endlessly?

The fairytale world had enough kindness to offer everybody. Wasn’t that the fundamental rule? Be good, be altruistic, and your kindness will spread and be repaid tenfold. Live Happily Ever After. If that was the case, if fairytales were true, Earth would be pure utopia right now.

Earth was not utopia. Stories were being followed out to the last printed pixel on the page. Futile - the hexact definition of it. Generations of villainous students lost themselves, and what for? Only one purpose. It was to demonstrate a lesson to other students: don’t be like this, or else there is no Happily Ever After for you.

And Turnus… what about himself? How did he play into all this?

~*~

Two hours later, he got a response.

He scanned through the response - well-reasoned, sources cited, and otherwise credible. But after the pacing he did around the room, after the repetition of thoughts that swirled in his head, he could only feel sick, looking at this email on the topic that he infused into himself like tea from a strainer.

What did pique his interest though, was how soon all of this was thrown together. What sort of professor with a PhD had time for a sixteen-year-old, and enough time to compile all this information?

Turnus made a throwaway Little Redditing Hood account, and posted in a few academic subreddits on how long he should hexpect academics to respond to his emails. Would it be reasonable for replies to be sent within the day?

None of the responses were remotely close to two hours. Two hours, _on a Friday night_.

Then, he messaged Airmid.

“Depends. Funny enough, if I send it from my highschool email, I usually get a reply quicker than from my university email? Professors are strange.”

Well, that was enough of a peculiarity to look into.

He decided to put the point of why roles perpetuate aside, and worked instead digging into education in the fairytale world.

~*~

“I’m worried about you.”

On Saturday morning, Orleans was blocking the door to their room, stopping Turnus from grabbing all his belongings to head off to bury himself in the Lifairy.

“I’m really, really worried.”

“Orleans, I don’t have time for this. Let me pass.”

“No,” the other prince’s voice was firm. “Not until you spend time with your friends, okay? You can’t just hole yourself up in a room of books forever! Do you know what Vitamin D is?”

“The sun activates it and it stops me from having rickets. Next question.”

Orleans had a look of perpetual exasperation on his face.

“I’m proud of these blogs,” Turnus said, hoping that Orleans would be moved by a statement of his own happiness. “I want to work on them more.”

“But sometimes, you sound like… I don’t know, even Sage Idason! You used to have so much chill, where’s all of it now?”

“I am, like, living my best life.”

“Not with this much stress! Please come out and hang with us, alright?” Orleans looked up at his roommate with a set of doe-like eyes. No person could have refused.

Turnus did. “No. Not after this,” he said. “I can’t believe it -- you’re really keeping me from the Lifairy?”

“I’m looking out for you! You can’t just bury yourself in the books all day! When was the last time you went outside?”

“Fine. Let’s go outside.”

Orleans beamed like the golden sun, and pulled onto Turnus’ arm to make their way to the sports field. The King of the Gold Mines had no intention of actually doing sports, it was just a common area that he liked to study in.

And as soon as they were outside, Turnus spun around sharply, and broke into a sprint, retreating back into the castle. As he ran, he heard Orleans’ exasperated sigh, but no sound of footsteps. Still, he didn’t slow down, until he got back to his room and locked the door.

Once back at the dorm, Turnus quickly glanced out of their shared dorm room window at the grassy plains below. Orleans was still standing there. He hadn’t even tried to chase after him. His roommate, dejected, shook his head at the castle, and walked off into the fields.

 _Neat_ , thought Turnus. And he got reading.

One of Orleans’ comments did stick in his mind, though. _Like Sage_.

Turnus spent the rest of the afternoon giving himself a refresher on all the content the senior had ever produced, and spent the evening in silent, quiet contemplation. Sage Idason only got into the “conspiracy theory” thing at the beginning of the year. Before, the theatre kid was known for only theatre.

After scouring through the blog, Turnus turned off all his devices, sprinkled salt over his window frame, and had his biweekly breakdown in the shower. For good measure, he decided that he would buy aluminium foil tomorrow.

When Orleans returned to the dorm at ten, Turnus was in the middle of rearranging the furniture.

“What…” said his roommate. “Turnus… why?”

“See, if I place the drawer here, then signals from the nearest phone tower won’t have a direct path to my bed,” Turnus shrugged. “I’m kidding. That’s just modern Feng Shui which is pseudoscience. No, I’m just rearranging this for fun.”

“If you say so,” said Orleans, who wasn’t very convinced.

“It’s the only way I feel like I can have control over my life.”

~*~

Speak of the sun, and he will appear. Or rather, speak of the Ida _son_.

Turnus was spending Sunday at the Lifairy again. He was entering his school email into another database to access more data until--

“Hey Wyllt,” said a voice.

“ASAFLDKLHH,” went Turnus, who flailed sideways and fell out of his seat.

“Shh,” said the source of the voice, who turned out to be Sage hiding behind a curtain. “You don’t want the Authors to hear, right? We should talk.”

“We’re in the Lifairy, right now.”

“Well, not in the quiet area,” Sage lowered his voice even more. “There’s an anarcho-syndicalist bookstore cafe in a secluded area of BookEnd. Fantastic WiFairy.”

At the anarcho-syndicalist bookstore cafe with Fantastic WiFairy, in the secluded area of BookEnd, Turnus ordered a chai latte and sat down opposite to Sage Idason.

Sage Idason was the son of Little Ida, and as with any legacy from a Hans Christian Andersen story, prone to dramatics, literally. The boy was in his senior year, and the vice-president of one of the drama clubs at Ever After High. When not on stage, he was known for one thing: his conspiracy theories.

“I don’t know why you approached me,” Turnus said. “I’ve only been blogging for like, a week.”

“And I’ve only been in the conspiracy theory game for-- what? Not even a year. There are people, in years below me, that have been doing this before even Freedom Year,” Sage had his gasmask lowered down to his neck, so that his voice wasn’t muffled. “I think they know what they’re doing, better than I am. Sometimes, I wish they hextended a hand and helped a poor kid out, so that’s what I’m going to do now, for you.”

“Thanks?”

“How are you documenting? How is everything getting recorded?” he pulled out a manila folder he had on hand, and laid it spread on the table. “Here’s how I do it. Colour-coded, markers and highlighters in my pockets always, in case I ever need to jot something down. Every piece is important - every piece connects to the larger puzzle.”

“I… it’s all digital. I have a Sword document with notes and citations.”

“Digital?” and Sage’s face lit up with concern. “I mean, I have everything digitally backed up - and my harddrives are labelled. But without physical copies of things, I would worry so much! Besides, how do you keep messy notes? Scraps from journals?”

“I don’t really have any. This blog isn’t that personal,” Turnus said. “I’m not even like… searching for government secrets or… I wouldn’t even call what I do conspiracy. I just look at evidence, I see trends, and I comment on them and guess why they might occur.”

“Isn’t that what we all do?”

“Don’t you write about Narrator Theory? And Author Theory, which is probably even more out-there than Narrator Theory,” Turnus commented. “That said, you’re surprisingly a lot calmer than how you usually appear on your Mirror Blog.”

Sage Idason paused, and seemed rather startled. “I feel called out.”

At that moment, the cafe worker arrived with their coffee orders, placing them down on the table. In the mugs, was latte art. Sage’s had a little cloud, while Turnus’ was a newborn chick in an egg.

“You know what I usually talk about on that blog of mine. It’s Author Theory. Authors are everywhere, they’re listening in, they’re plotting things... how much of takes -- which are, I admit, controversial -- can I pass off as theatre kid dramatics? Or teenage kid angst, or-- I don’t know. I’m only seventeen, I might out-grow it,” Sage continued, then sighed. “Do people even remember who I was before the conspiracies? I sang, I danced, I acted-- I wrote plays, did anyone care about those?”

It was a ramble if Turnus ever saw one.

“I blame the summer between Legacy and Classics Year, personally. The dreams were getting more vivid, even when I nap…” he took a sip from his coffee, and eyed a distant corner of the cafe. “If I sound too serious about what I say, if people can’t write off what I do as ‘ironic’...”

“Uhhh.”

“I’ll let you in on one thing. Your first blog post,” Sage lowered his voice. “The one of the von Schonwerth’s treasures.”

“The money laundering scheme?”

“For fairytale authors, in fact, which is exactly what you commented on in your second. Did you ever hear about the one iconic investigative journalist? Tate Marie.”

“She wrote on those, didn’t she?”

“And found dead in the well of her house, did you know about that? She was making breakthroughs! My best guess? An authoritative plan to stop her from revealing things and stopping us from even considering that higher-ups are there to ruin us--”

Turnus found his hands gripping around the mug of chai latte more tightly.

“These things terrify me,” confessed the senior.

“Do they surprise you?”

“No, not really. And I told you, I dream vividly. I’ve lived nightmares. So why should I pull the curtain on everything-- on all that people call ‘conspiracies’, just because they’re scary? I know I’ve faced scary things like they’re real life. I think I’m almost indebted to people, that I have to get the word out.”

Turnus genuinely wasn’t understanding the flow of the conversation. Sage Idason’s thoughts seemed scattered, a completely different persona to the actor, the theatre kid, the playwright. “I’m lost,” he said. “Why am I even here in the first place?”

“The Authors.”

And Turnus mentally groaned. He didn’t want to fixate on an idea that was barely provable by empirical evidence.

“You seem like the kind of person who cares a lot about dreams.”

“Do I?” Turnus said. “I mean, I’m like any ordinary person. I dream. I’ve been remembering more of my dreams this week. Then I’ll probably forget them next week.”

“Magic can _induce_ dreams.”

“I don’t really think magic is in question, right now.”

“I wasn’t finished. Magic can induce dreams, that’s why people buy dream spells. Without those spells, we’d still dream. Even you, who claims he’s not magical, dreams. There’s definitely something intrinsically human about dreams.”

“There is this quote about them. Humans love stories so much that even when we sleep, we dream to tell stories?”

“That, and speaking as Ida’s son, I think there’s a lot of truth in them. Are you writing them off as just human thoughts, because they can be more than that.”

Turnus shrugged, and downed the rest of his chai latte. “I really don’t know how any of this advances what I’m doing. Like, I still don’t know my takeaway from this conversation.”

“Maybe it’s just for the purpose of the Authors. Maybe they just want a conversation between us, for their own benefit.”

~*~

Unsurprisingly, “ _Ever After High and its monopolisation of fairytale education_ ” was not as much of a hit. It didn’t strike the same chord as his previous two blogs did with the students, and he got a fair few nasty comments on it on “of course things run in the family - that’s how you quality ensure” and “this seems like just an hexcuse to complain, I was hoping for more hot villain prince interviews”.

Most people praised the research and the lengths he would go to cite the points he made. “Among cryptid sightings and senseless gossip, I really do think Turnus Wyllt’s writings really stand out! And no alias! No persona! Only _Veritas_. Only truth.”

The conversation with Sage, like the dreams, was dissipating from his head. The Authors, what a concept. Sure, it wasn’t something you could _disprove_ , but it felt wrong to fixate on something seemingly on a different, abstract dimension altogether when real people were trapping other real people in horrid cycles.

~*~

The cyclic, futile question still taunted him.

Villainous students served the system as another cog in the engine, rotating endlessly to keep the world of fairytale legacies upfloat.

What about love interests?

What was Turnus meant to do, other than show up at the end, and get married to the princess that had endured so much? Take his role out of the Princess Mayblosom, and the story proceeds anyway. This wasn’t a mere case of being from an “obscure” tale either. Take the most famous fairytale in Ever After, Snow White. It’s the same formula: the prince at the end is a prize for the princess who had suffered.

He knew all this. He’d complained about this before, and would only stay quiet because the Ever After High name was prestigious, because being the first legacy in his family meant that he “should be grateful”.

This was like what was hexpected of the villains. He had no true, ultimate purpose to serve. There was no point to his presence and participation in a story that had been told for centuries on end. What lesson was so important to learn, that the world had to tell the Princess Mayblossom over and over?

Be born lucky into a good family, and if you suffer, you deserve to be rewarded. And make that reward a human being.

To be a trophy husband was bad enough. _To be a trophy husband in this sort of entitled system--_

It disgusted him to his core.

~*~

    Hi,

    

    Gladiolus. I'm breaking up with you.

    

    I'm sorry. There's no way of putting this lightly. I'm not apologising for breaking up with you - it's not in any way my fault for doing this, and it is not yours, either. It's for the better of both of us, so there's no point in saying sorry for something meant to happen.

    

    I'm saying sorry because this is a terrible and an impersonal way to break up. You definitely deserve something nicer than a letter - even if this is handwritten and scented and all nicely made up.

    

    I'm saying sorry because I didn't have the guts to do it properly, to your face, in person. I'm saying sorry because this is no better than a hext message or a phone call.

    

    I hope we can still be friends! Really. You're a great guy. I love you and all your sci-fi nerd nerdery! We just don't go well as a couple.

    Best wishes,

Turnus

His phone beeped, signalling to him that he should make his leave for Gabriel Fanfarinet. For the rest of his life, Turnus Wyllt had to worry about how the World of Ever After would endlessly degrade him. For now, he had a consultation meeting to worry about.

Turnus tucked the letter into the envelope, but left the rest of his writing supplies on his desk. He tore off the wax paper at the mouth of the envelope, sealing it adhesively.


	6. Descent Performed in Sorrow

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow..._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
Turnus had walked into the consulting meeting with no hexpectation, and half an hour in, he didn’t know what he was hexpecting. So far, it had mostly been conversation and life talk, and he had half a mind to just walk out by this point.

Behind Gabriel were textbooks, and hanging on the wall was a tote-bag for the University of Ever After.

“Don’t you need a degree to do consulting?” Turnus had asked.

“I’m literally only clerking right now,” responded Gabriel. “Besides, very few fairytale roles actually require degrees – the applicational stuff is mostly taught at Ever After High or select magnet schools. Could go somewhere more prestigious, but hey, I wanted to stay near BookEnd.”

“I mean, with destiny, you barely have to do anything politically.”

“By the time destiny rolls around, I’ll have a degree. So one can’t say I went through my life accomplishing nothing. Mother would be proud if she knew.”

For Turnus, university had been a hexpectation, until destiny threw a magic wench into everything. To an extent, it still was, just less urgent. The moment academic pressures stopped from his parents was the moment Turnus realised that a trophy husband meant that he’d never be forced to succeed on his own terms.

Before he could respond, sharp, incessant knocks came from Gabriel’s door.

“Uh, could you get that?” he asked Turnus.

Turnus turned the handle, and standing in the door frame was Airmid Valerian.

“Hi Gabriel,” they said.

“Airmid, I’m in a meeting right now.”

“Hello Airmid,” said Turnus, just to be polite.

“Hello Turnus! I’m rather sorry you have to be stuck here, especially since it’s so near dinnertime.”

“I’d like dinner,” he said at the mention of dinnertime.

“So would I,” responded Airmid.

Gabriel was glad that the other two were locked into small talk, so that he didn’t have to try pushing a conversation ahead. He briefly wondered if this clerkship was even worth it. Then, much like Turnus and Airmid, started contemplating dinner. He had an hexpectation to fulfill for Godfather Death. Perhaps food was a better way of bonding. Perhaps Airmid, with their sudden entry, was Lanius’ way of checking on him.

“Let’s get dinner then,” Gabriel stood up. “Pick a location at BookEnd.”

Airmid and Turnus eventually decided on an anarcho-syndicalist bookstore cafe that was nested in one of the side alleyways of BookEnd. Gabriel was not entirely fond of the idea, and suggested that the two pick something else. To annoy him further, they went with bastardised French food. The French bastard complied.

At the restaurant, conversation was stilted. There was something inhibiting when it came to talking naturally in a room where both Gabriel and Airmid were present. The two simply did not get along. Anything that one said would be immediately refuted or criticised by the other. All interference was deconstructive and the atmosphere was dampening.

When the cheque was finally laid down on the table, Turnus was thankful for the relief from the dinner talk.

"I'll pay," said Gabriel, and he put his credit card on the table. The name on the card caught Turnus’ eyes as it passed him by.

Not Gabriel Fanfarinet, but Gabriel _Benoit_.

Turnus had not forgotten about Bastion Fanfarinet. The excitement of running _Veritas_ had just swept him away in the behind the scenes of Ever After, and this little piece of evidence had just pushed the subject back into the limelight.

Benoit. What a generic, French surname. Maybe it was his mother’s surname. But cards had an expiration range of usually four years at maximum. If Gabriel had attended Ever After High, then wouldn’t the last name on the card be _Fanfarinet_?

 _If_ Gabriel attended. Turnus realised that no one had actually mentioned if Gabriel had gotten his education here. He was _out of_ Ever After High, which was vague enough.

Gabriel Fanfarinet signed the receipt, and the trio exited the restaurant. “You know the hexpectations, Dr Physician,” he reminded Airmid, thinking of his own contract with Godfather Death.

“What?” said Airmid.

“You know. I should really be off though. Take care.” He turned, heading off deeper into BookEnd.

The two students made their way back in the direction of Ever After High.

“Airmid,” Turnus said. “We should talk.”

“Alright. About what?”

“Benoit. Why was his last name Benoit?”

“It’s his mother’s name.”

Alright. That was his assumption. “Then why is it on his credit card? I thought Fanfarinet was his surname.”

That, Airmid did not have a response for.

“How long ago did he stop going by Benoit? You’d assume that a legacy would take on their legacy parent’s surname once they find out, right?”

“Yes?”

Turnus frowned. A guess made sense, and would slot too perfectly with what happened. “Gabriel only found out recently, right? Recently enough to have an active credit card that still has his nonlegacy name?”

“... Yes.”

“And it would be ridiculous, right, to be assigned a destiny at this age, especially at the risk of… I don’t know, not having someone to be Fanfarinet and the story not going on. That’s why Ever After High was built, correct?” Turnus’ voice was rising with each sentence. “Airmid, you’re being quiet.”

“You’re right,” said the doctor. They had been unusually tight-lipped with Turnus. “I have a very strong suspicion what happened.”

“Does Bastion have anything to do with it?”

The doctor betrayed themself with a nod. “I don’t know whether to be angry with the person who aided him, or to respect his privacy and not question it.”

“I don’t have-- I don’t have it in me to hold back these questions, Airmid.”

“Well… I usually don’t, at least in the case of scientific pursuit. For some reason, this is different,” Airmid said. “I realise that I’m probably breaching confidentiality… especially considering that Bastion doesn’t want to be found. He barely wants to be remembered.” Their voice went quiet. “I’m glad he let me remember him, though.”

“How? Between us, and uh, maybe Adalinda, no one else remembers him. I remember him doing so much - volunteering, political internships…”

“Simple. He made a deal.”

“... devils?”

“No, he’s a very intelligent person. Death.”

Turnus’ eyes widened. “As in Death himself? Or--”

“Godfather Death. So just a reaper,” Airmid’s otherwise clenched arms fell defeated at his side. “My father.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“My father has a vapourisation curse. It is never fully effective, there will always be some pivotal people that will hold the original memory. Such pivotal people are always chosen by my father, who casts the spell.”

Turnus said nothing in response, letting the future physician ramble.

“I don’t know how many people are involved. I don’t know who or how many people work for him, or if he outsources this dirty work…” Airmid frowned, and looked downcast. “It’s very shocking, isn’t it? To realise you actually know so little about the person you call father.”

“It’s a spell you said, right?”

“I assume so, it shows all the signs.”

“Airmid, you know I’m immune to magic, right?”

It took a good half-minute for the physician to react. “Explain.”

And Turnus was sick of explaining this to people, but you must never conceal information from a doctor, so explain he did. The future physician was listening intently, processing, and with every sentence and description, their hand fidgets would change, and there were subtle differences in expression.

“That makes so much sense! You’re seeing through the veil, the smoke and mirrors-- that’s why you’re been writing like that, because you can just instantly process the data and proofs,” Airmid’s voice was filled with excitement, and only mildly restrained. “While the rest of the world have been firing alpha particles at gold foil, you’ve been seeing quarks.”

“I-- I don’t know how apt that metaphor is.”

“Please, I’m trying to accommodate for your own scientific interests!” they said. “Turnus, let’s work together. Your observation skills would be instrumental in a few projects I had in mind.”

“Maybe… I don’t know…” Even though this wasn’t a case of beauty, or prestige, the way that physician worded the request put him off. Perhaps objectification wasn’t the right term for it, but the fact that an uncontrollable aspect of himself was being used to further someone else’s interests.

The physician could possibly have just been trying to accommodate for both of them. Turnus could imagine Airmid Valerian describing the collaboration as “mutualism” or “symbiosis”. How could he possibly know though, given that he had no reason to trust anyone?

~*~

When he returned, Orleans was out. Turnus took the envelope, and made his way two floors up to slide it under Gladiolus’ dorm door. Perhaps it was just nerves, but the envelope felt heavier than before.

It was getting late. He still had class tomorrow.

Turnus wondered if it was worth making another stop at the Lifairy. He did have something planned blog-wise, once again on monopolisation. The research was still being compiled. After that blog, he had no further plans. For the course of his brother’s wedding, he had already asked another person prolific on the MirrorNet to prep up a guest blog while he was away.

He went back to his room, and fell onto the bed. It had been a long day.

When he woke up, his MirrorPhone’s clock told him it was around 3am. Orleans was in his corner of the room, asleep. Turnus checked his MirrorPhone again, having forgotten what time it said, and his eyes fell on the date. He hadn’t started packing for his brother’s wedding.

In the morning, when Orleans was awake, he continued his little game of being concerned. “I’m glad you got sleep, I was getting worried.”

“Not much, I woke up at 3am and was packing until 7.” He gestured to a half-filled suitcase.

“What? No, Turnus, you can’t do that. Go get more rest.”

“I guess I’m still only human.”

“Hexactly! You can’t push yourself…”

His roommate’s statement just passed over Turnus like a missed arrow point. “Driven by human things… like the pursuit of knowledge at the expense of sleep…”

“That’s nothing to brag about!” Orleans crossed his arms. “You’re going away in a few days anyway, we haven’t seen you at all…”

“You’ll see me when I’m back. Also, we’re literally roommates.”

“That’s not my point!” Orleans said, frowning visibly. “Look, Ramsey will be dropping by in like an hour, so go fix your hair or something.”

Turnus raised an eyebrow at how quickly Orleans was able to change the subject. Despite having literally run away from Orleans a day or so before, he compiled with his roommate’s last comment. In the mirror, Turnus looked at himself and the purple hair, dead and straightened.

~*~

In the same day, Turnus was tackled to the ground, just as he was making his way from Advanced Mathemagics to History of Tall Tales.

“Turnus!” Gladiolus said.

“What is happening?” Turnus wanted to say, but he was face down on the floor, so he sounded more like “wahjsdfk”.

“I got your letter! What did you need to tell me?”

At that, Turnus propped himself up off the ground, and got back on his feet so he could face Gladiolus directly. “Nothing? I clearly already said everything in the letter.”

“What do you mean? Didn’t you send this?”

    Dear Gladiolus,

    

    We haven’t caught up in ages! You’re a faetastic person, appreciate you heaps.

    

    BTW, I have something very important to tell you face to face.

    Love,

Turnus

Turnus’ hands curled around the edges of the paper, crinkling it like a stress ball. “This isn’t my handwriting. You should know that.”

“Oh! So, whose is it?”

“Did you get any other note? Is this the only note you got in the past few days?”

“Yeah, no, this is the one. Did you have anything to say?”

“I do! And I wrote it all down carefully, and it didn’t even get to you?”

Gladiolus passed him another piece of paper - the envelope the letter came in.

Carefully, carefully, Turnus turned it over. On the back of the envelope, was a broken wax seal. He lifted up the flap of the envelope, and looked at the underside where the adhesive would usually be, but its once-sticky surface was coated in a thin slice of paper. It was obvious what happened -- someone took his envelope, and opened it with a paper-knife, and resealed it.

He had delivered a forged message with his own hand.

“I’m breaking up with you, Gladiolus. That’s what my original letter said. That’s also probably what this person wanted me to tell you, to your face.”

“And you… you weren’t going to tell that to me to my face before?”

“Look, I’m stressed, I’m busy, highschool is only four years, and well-- I have the future to worry about.”

“But as a letter… not to my face.”

“Fine, that was really cowardly of me and I am sorry,” Turnus paused, and lowered his voice. “Also, uh, we’re having this conversation in the middle of the hallway right now? I need to get to class?”

“Turnus, that’s-- it’s fine, we can talk later!”

“I’m stressed.”

“Go to class,” and as suddenly as he appeared, Gladiolus dissolved into the crowds of students passing, like a drop of water into the ocean.

For the rest of the day, Turnus felt disturbed. The weight that he hoped to get off his back -- a relationship that was drifting apart, one that he realised would make him neither happy nor comfortable --, still hung. There was absolutely zero desire to return to Gladiolus, but closure was not there yet.

When Turnus got back from classes, he found his roommate back in their shared dorm room. “Orleans. Let’s talk face-to-face.”

“Which is what you _should_ have been doing!” replied his roommate in a more forceful tone than Turnus had ever heard from Orleans. “I can’t believe I had to prompt you into doing that!”

“You’re like, the second person to tell me that,” said Turnus, who plopped himself down on his desk chair.

“We’re friends, Gladiolus is our friend. You-- this is not you. You shouldn’t--”

“You shouldn’t-- you shouldn’t tell me what to do. You weren’t there when I wrote the letter. I put the letter in the envelope. Orleans… you pried into it, didn’t you? That was a private matter, this wasn’t your letter. Like… did you literally have to invade my privacy? Do friends do that?”

“Maybe not, but friends also don’t break up over handwritten letter,” Orleans’ voice was still forceful, but veering into pleading now. “We’re friends, Turnus. I was concerned. You’ve just been so… wound up.”

“You don’t _know_ me, Orleans. I’ve literally never been more… I don’t know, I’ve literally never cared so much about anything at Ever After High until the last week and a bit. I don’t want to… I don’t know, keep on passively following you around, away.”

Orleans was still speaking. “But I didn’t want to be hasty… I had to search around for evidence and stuff, right? I was prying because I cared! I interfered because I cared about both of you!”

“You could have just asked.”

“But you kept insisting you were fine!”

“Wouldn’t be a problem if you just took my word on things.”

The future King of the Gold Mines sighed, and removed his monocle to rest his hand on his own cheek. “We are still friends, right? Friends forgive each other.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be friends.” Turnus rolled his desk chair away near his bed, and tucked himself into a little ball on it. He refused to believe it. Out of all the places now barred from him, he couldn't even feel safe in his own dorm.


	7. Contrary to Human Love

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love._

|  | 

”  
  
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Wednesday morning, Turnus’ parents came to pick him up. There was no time to waste saying goodbye to Orleans or anyone else, Turnus simply picked up his suitcase and double checked he had everything he needed, before heading out of the doors of Ever After High.

Despite being royalty, his parents drove the car themselves. It was a rental, that would take them to the closest airport, then to Geneva in Switzerland, where the couple had chosen their venue.

It was near the Lake Geneva, and the wedding photos would have glorious spreads of the Alps. They had planned for it to be a grand event - boats out on the lake for guests, days-long festivities, the perfect blend of Algerian and Bangladeshi and Western traditions.

Everything was a blur to Turnus. He remembered small talk with his parents, them asking if he was okay and how was school, and the answers he gave would be empty. He remembered some vague phrases, the odd comment of them “being proud of him”, though he did not believe or take that comment to heart. They brought him his favourite snacks, and he took a bite out of one, but felt only guilt after.

On the hour flight there, he put in earphones and a favourite podcast, but couldn’t process any of the words. Turnus Wyllt, with his window seat, only had the mental energy to watch the clouds pass below the plane. He closed his eyes and dreamed of walking on them.

At the Geneve Aeroport, Brutus and Sofia were waiting.

Brutus Wyllt ran over to his brother and pulled him into a tight hug. He donned his iconic pair of heart-shaped glasses, and was wearing a comfortable fleece jacket over a button-up. Sofia Wares stood by his side, looking as clever as always.

All the legal things, all the family traditions, these were done in small intimate settings.

The formalities were over with in a haze, and Turnus felt he was still disassociating by the time the parties started.

~*~

The company that Brutus Wyllt keeps is decently up-there. Not up-there enough to merit you the celebrity level of a fairytale legacy, but when your brother and sister-in-law were among some of the most learned of mages, there is flair and there is prestige in the people you know.

Turnus was appreciating it a little more, now that he was beginning to disassociate less.

Fairy mead was much like regular mead, except that instead of the honey being made by pollinating bees, it was made by pollinating fairies. Turnus, true to his high fantasy obsessions, would have called mead his favourite alcoholic drink, but a single sip of fairy mead would have made him feel sick. It was being served at the bar.

True to his word, however, Brutus had provided non-fairy-based mead, which Turnus had a bottle of in his hands right now. It was unopened. He hadn’t been feeling cognisant in the past few days. He didn’t want to stop feeling cognisant now.

Maybe the music was nice. The scenery was definitely beautiful - Lake Geneva was gorgeous at this time of year, and Turnus had a mental note to get on one of the boats on it. He stared into the distance, at the Alps, and hummed the tune to the final song from the Sound of Music to himself.

Brutus Wyllt came over to check on him. “Turnus!” said his brother. His otherwise messy rose-gold hair was done up impeccably, and matched the colour of his suit. “Just wanted to check in.”

“I’m really happy for you,” Turnus said, in a very neutral tone of voice. “I’m just a little overwhelmed, but I promise I feel a lot of emotions right now.”

His brother pinched him on his cheeks. “Good! Happy doesn’t even describe how I’m feeling right now! I love Sofia so much! Can you believe, I’m like, married? To her?”

“She is really cool.” Family dinners were always enjoyable with her around, and she always had something smart to say. When it came to Turnus, she never failed to ask him intelligent questions about his life. Never surface level things like what he planned to do in the future, but questions situated around his interests and values.

Brutus pinched Turnus’ cheeks again. “I mean, above everything, you have a lot to thank Sofia for. She was the one who recommended you to Ever After High in the first place.”

Not only smart, but also well-connected. Someone without a legacy, recommending him directly to Ever After High.

“That too, I guess...” If _‘the monopolisation of fairytale education’_ taught Turnus anything, it was that the Ever After High education would propel his further studies in a way no other school would. “Would it be rude to say that I wish I got a better role?”

“You’re French-Canadian, it’s a French story. You’re the son of royals, and Dad has the name of Merlin.”

“It’s just a surname!”

“I feel like Dad’s more than Merlin than just name. There’s a lot of similarities between him and the wizard,” said Brutus. “For one, they’re both cambions.”

Turnus didn’t think he heard Brutus right. “What?”

“Cambion.”

It was a term Turnus only knew from Dungeons and Damsels. Cambion. The crowd and the atmosphere was still filled with noise, so he was sure he misheard and that Brutus meant something else.

“But yeah, your role required someone handsome beyond measure, so Dad being half-incubus, and getting his genes, was just a bonus.”

_Ah._

He did not.

“I feel like you should have known,” Brutus continued. “What, with you being at Ever After High and all that.”

“Please be joking,” Turnus said. But he couldn’t even convince himself with that plead. It explained so much.

The restless nights of his father, for one thing. The natural charm of his brother.

Closer to home were the conjectures that the doctors and wizards would make about Turnus’ lack of magic. “A curse by a higher celestial power” was one that he had snorted at -- what heavenly figure would care to curse him? -- but now he realised that their guesses were based in some verity. Even with that knowledge, though, they still never found out why magical energy became a void for him.

An entire room across from them, Turnus’ father was talking with some family members on Sofia’s side. With the way he gestured and spoke, he was clearly telling some dramatic anecdote.

All that charm, all that social grace of being part-incubus, that was something completely lost on Turnus. He was almost thankful. Being a trophy husband was bad enough, he reminded himself.

“Go talk to other guests,” Brutus urged, breaking Turnus’ thought process. “I can’t keep you company all the time!”

“I’ll do that.” Even without the prompt, Turnus would have. The news was weighing down his chest, he needed others to elevate it off his mind before it crushed him.

He broke open the lid of the magic-less mead, and downed a gulp without even tasting it. And he was now off to make polite conversation.

Most of the guests asked him how Ever After High was, and he gave his formulaic answer. Prestigious, he would say. Faetastic education and resources. The people -- if Turnus actually talked more to people at Ever After High -- were wide-ranging and engaging with them hexposes you to so much of the world.

The guests would then call him smart, then ask for his role, learn he was a prince’s son promised to a princess, and change the compliment to “lucky to be handsome”.

Turnus’ smile would be paired with his eyes darting to the side, and he’d hexcuse himself to make conversation with the next person. Small talk was fine for him if he knew the formula. Introduce himself, ask them what they did for a job, how they knew the couple, and maybe a throw-away question about their plus-one.

“My plus-one is over there,” gestured a sprite, when the plus-one question was asked. On one of the boats closer to shore, was a green-haired witch.

“Oh, I know them,” Turnus squinted to make sure. “Utility Fei.”

“They’ve done archival work at Ever After High, so you probably run into them. I’m not surprised. They speak very fondly of me -- did they ever say anything?”

Turnus shook his head. “I don’t even know your name. I’m Turnus Wyllt. How do you know them?”

“Sparingly, if I can help it. They flicker through forms a lot, with an average lag of two years. Sometimes, when we meet again, they’d be a completely different person.”

“Must be fun,” he said. “Just being able to pick up any life you wanted.”

“They’d probably agree with you. Utility refuses to be a teenager, though. ‘I don’t think there’s a worse time in your life, than when you’re sixteen’, I’ve heard them once say.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“So you are.”

“I still didn’t get your name.”

The sprite paused, and lowered the hat on her head into her hands. “You can call me Chanel Lyang.”

“Is that your real name?”

“It is my name, the one that I have chosen for myself.”

Alright, Turnus thought. “I respect that.”

“I will say one thing. I’ve been in this body for over thirty years. I enjoy stability in the way that Utility Fei does not.”

Turnus wasn’t sure how to take that statement, so he merely just took it as face-value, and found another question to push forward the conversation. “Do you know Brutus? Or is it Sofia?”

“Sofia,” spoke the sprite-changeling. “She was outsourced for some security work in the company I’m under. Incredibly clever.”

“Does Utility know her?”

Chanel took a while to respond. “They’ve had at least a few run-ins.”

At this point in time, Utility was done with their little boat trip, and had arrived back on shore. They skipped over to where Turnus and Chanel was. “Hello friends!” said the witch, and bopped them both on the shoulder. “How’s your little project going?”

“I’m doing my best.”

“Faetastic!” responded Utility. “That’s all you can do! Sometimes it isn’t good enough, but the fun is in trying, isn’t it?”

“Did you know,” Chanel said, “that somehow the hosts managed to get authentic poutine, even at a Swiss venue?” Out of nowhere, they seemingly had a plate of poutine in their hands. “Turnus, you should go try some, it’s over at the fifth food table.”

Poutine sounded like an idea as any. Back at Ever After High, Gosling McGee would try make Turnus some, and was working on perfecting her recipe to be perfectly Quebec. Chanel was also Quebecoise. A compliment and a comment on authenticity was optimistic.

He ended over to the fifth food table. Was he even in the mood for poutine? No, but when else was he going to get genuine poutine? Definitely not at Ever After.

So he filled up a plate and sat down at a table. He was feeling quite done with guests. Over at another table, was his mother.

Turnus picked up the plate, and plopped himself down beside her.

She greeted him with a pat on his head. “Turnus. How are things?”

“Hi Mother,” he said, weakly.

“You always seem so tired,” she said. “It’s a party, and you look tired now.”

“I am tired, Mother.”

“School? Life? The flight?”

He blinked, not sure what how to respond. The past few days had been such a blur, and Turnus was certain he would begin disassociating soon now. Small talk it was. He’d tell his mother some updates about his academic life. “Did I tell you how I’ve been talking to a consultant? I was so worried about my grades… so worried that my scores in theory wouldn’t make up for my practical scores.”

“You’re at your brother’s wedding, and you’re talking to me about grades. Turnus, are you alright? Your father’s over there--”

At the mention of his father, Turnus started, and his head cleared up. “Mom. Mama, on the topic of Dad, Brute just told me something. He’s a cambion?”

“Oh, yes, that. He is. Why?”

“How did I not know? How does Brutus know? Were you going to… I don’t know, wait until I was eighteen or something to tell me? I know what an incubus is, Mom. How could we not? Merlin was also part-one.”

“We told Brutus because he was getting married. The two wanted children. Of course he needed to go and check his bloodline, to see if any kids would be at risk for anything.”

“And why didn’t we know before?”

“We didn’t want to concern you, with all that you have going on at that school.”

“Why did you hide it from us? Is Dad ashamed? Are you ashamed?” Turnus asked. “Maman--”

“We didn’t want to stress you out with the weight that you’d be treated differently, by virtue of what you are. More importantly, we didn’t want you to internalise anything.”

“Ma, are you saying-- are you genuinely telling me that-- that just because I have demon blood, I’m supposed to deal with _that_? I’m supposed to deal with other people’s presumptions and I’m supposed to feel _shame_?”

She was quiet.

“I’m already a trophy prince,” he said. “Mama, if I already have that to deal with, then learning all this… being quarter-incubus, then everything is just going to get worse.” His mother wasn’t responding, so Turnus rambled on. “I wasn’t meant to be a trophy prince, I don’t want to be a trophy prince-- when did I ever get a say in any of this--”

“Turnus, child, didn’t you want to go to Ever After High when you got the invitation?”

He exhaled loudly. “Not for the role, maman. I wanted to go because it was prestigious. It was the name value. What a stupid reason. What a stupid, superficial reason...” and he put his head down on the table, his purple hair blanketing around him. “I’m not a prize for a princess, you know that, I don’t care about name value, I don’t want to face Ever After High--”

“Stay strong, son,” she said, and placed her arm on his back.

Turnus raised his head off the table slightly, just enough for his eyes to be in line with the plate of poutine. Well. He got this far. He had been dealing with heavy news over the past week. Why let just another piece of it squander his appetite for his favourite comfort food?

When Turnus finished off the poutine, he felt significantly better. Better enough to make polite conversation again. His gaze passed over the venue, but he caught sight of his sister-in-law, and realised he hadn’t congratulated her yet.

“Sofia!” Turnus said, once he managed to get his way over and get a word in. “Congratulations, you’ve probably heard that a million times.”

“Surreal, isn’t it?” she was beaming. “So many people… so much going on… it’s so difficult not to be overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed...” Without her glasses shielding her face, with contacts in, it was much easier to see her eyes. They were wide, nervous looking. Turnus knew enough about Sofia to know her anxiety in large settings.

“I’m really happy about the poutine,” he said. Small talk. He was getting good at this. “I liked the toppings? The fried egg and onions were great.”

“Oh, the food’s been what’s keeping me going. On the topic of eggs, have you tried the Deviled Eggs? I love eggs.”

In context, the word didn’t even relate to the newsbomb Brutus had dropped on him, but Turnus felt his stomach sink as he was reminded yet again of the fact.

_Devil._

“Oh, there’s Mr Wyllt over there! He’s the life of the party!”

Turnus turned his head, to see his father approaching them. “Hey Dad,” he said, and without thinking, took a solid step back.

“Turnus! Sofia! What a day.” And his natural smile was one that could only be called devil-ish. There was a childish, impish energy in his father. How could Turnus not have noticed it before?

The music changed to Prince Brightside. Sofia visibly gasped, and said she’d be back. Halfway across the venue, Brutus clearly had the same idea, for they were both heading for the same portion of the dancefloor.

“Dad,” said Turnus. “We should talk.” His eyes travelled to the horizon, and settled on Lake Geneva. “And, I want to get on a boat.”

So, within five minutes, the two were sitting in a boat on the Lake Geneva.

“Why are we here?” asked his father.

“I just wanted to make sure I got to go on one of the boats before the festivities ended,” Turnus said. He faced away from his dad, with his eyes set on the Alps.

“Oh! I see! It’s a father-son bonding kind of thing.” The voice of his father never wavered from its cheeriness.

With what strength he had, Turnus finally turned his body so that he could properly look his father in the eyes. They were gold, like his. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, and then, the following sentence was said so rushed and with emphasis from the back of his throat that almost scared himself: “Why didn’t you tell me you were a cambion?”

“I--” he said, and blinked confusedly. “I mean, I guess it wasn’t relevant, I didn’t want to worry you--”

It was not a satisfactory answer. Turnus’ words rattled off like a shower of arrows. “I don’t know _why_ you’re so desperate to hide _truth_ , or why anyone is, or why they’re ashamed of the truth, as if they--” and he felt his throat burn up. Turnus coughed, and immediately stopped talking. He didn’t know where he was feeling pain, until he felt his eyes burn up.

God. He couldn’t cry. He refused to cry on the date of his brother’s wedding.

“Turnus,” said his father. “Turnus, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t respond.

“Turnus,” repeated his father.

Once again, no response. Third time’s the charm. Mr Wyllt extended his arms, and Turnus accepted the hug.

“Can I stay here?” said Turnus. “Just, by myself. On the boat.”

On Lake Geneva, by the Alps. Alone -- hexactly what he was avoiding the whole evening. The empty small talk, the distractions of food. Back at school, over the past week and a bit, when he had been alone, his thoughts had consumed him.

But it was not loneliness he had feared, it was boredom.

His father let him be. Mr Wyllt would end up staying by his wife’s side for the rest of the evening.

By himself in the boat, Turnus just let himself watch the horizon, and imagined all thoughts from his brain spilling into the sea.

~*~

On the drive to the Aeroport, Turnus broke the silence.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said. “I don’t want to go back to school.”

His parents both glanced at each other, concerned.

“I should-- I must-- I just don’t want to…”

“Turnus,” his father said. “Turnus, you can come back home with us. We can call off the rest of the year, get you back in Canada.”

He felt blank and empty inside. “What even is there for me back in Canada?”

At least at Ever After High, he’d have things to do. He’d have people to talk to. He’d have a blog to run. At home, there’d be good food and familiar landscapes… but no friends, none of his current hobbies. Maybe he would be safe and bundled away from fairytales, but it was another Canadian - Sofia Wares - that introduced him to the fairytale authorities in the first place. Not even Canada was far away enough.

“I have to go back to school,” he said. “I don’t want to. But I’m certain - I need to be back.”

“Okay,” said his mother. “I’ll promise you one thing, Turnus. You can call us anytime. If you ever want to go home, then you can come home, no questions asked."


	8. All for Our Antichrist

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_The judge would walk me back to the door of his office, pat me on the shoulder and say in a friendly tone of voice: "That's all for our Antichrist today."_

|  | 

”  
  
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By the time Turnus returned to Ever After High, it was late at night and Orleans was asleep. Turnus slid into his pyjamas and tucked himself neatly into bed as not to disturb his roommate. He closed his eyes, then opened them. He was far too aware of the fact that he was meant to be sleeping.

He didn’t want to dream.

Sleep, dreams, these were all essentially things associated with incubi or cambion.

Was he going to live the rest of his life like this? Hyper-aware of this new fact about him, hyper-aware of how very little detail might relate to it? It was as if he was transported back again to being fourteen… fourteen and fresh off the boat in Fairytale Europe, realising what intense degree of reliance people had on magic here.

He tried to soothe himself with this logic: the fact that been true all his life, and he had never had any trouble with sleep. The only thing that changed in the way he navigated the world was his knowledge.

In the morning, he passed on bro-eakfast.

~*~

It became habit now, didn’t it? How after school, he would dive straight for the Lifairy. He knew the hexact corner of the place he preferred, and what angle to keep his MirrorBook screen tilted at, so the glare of the sun wouldn’t burn his eyes.

Nearby him, the library assistant was floating. He had a strong English accent, and if it weren’t for the ID badge that was clipped onto his pocket protector, most people would have taken him for a student. He was also often referred to as “one of the librarians”, though if you called him one, he’d kindly correct you.

“You need a degree in lifairy science!” he had said, once. “Perhaps that is something I will focus on post-destiny.”

Before the wedding, Turnus would have simply noted the horns atop the library assistant’s head and say nothing more. Even devils suffered the woes of capitalism and had to take up labour, surely.

But now, any reminder of infernal creatures only reminded him of his father. When Turnus looked at one, he would feel shame, not because he was truly ashamed of his existence, but ashamed of how his own father concealed a truth from him.

“Hexcuse me,” Turnus said, craning his head up to address the lifairy assistant. “I’m looking for a book.” On a scrap of paper, was a scrawled-down ISBN. It was a number of a book on the Matter of Britain, specifically a compilation of all the mythical creatures in the book. It included one of the most detailed accounts of Merlin’s cambion existences, though there was no saying that such detail was either precise nor accurate.

The lifairy assistant took out his MirrorPhone, and typed in the number carefully. “You know, you could have just given me the name.”

“I-” Turnus had no response for that, but let the lifary assistant meticulously type out the name away into a MirrorPad.

“Ah, funny that,” said the lifairy assistant. “Someone just before you was looking for the same thing! She didn’t check if out yet, though, so you’ll find her… around… somewhere.” He frowned. “I can help search?”

“No, I’m good.”

“She was heading in--” he gestured, “-- that vague direction. Surely you’ll find her, she was very recognisable. Literal Roman Emperor.”

There was only one person that it could be.

“Polynices!” called one of the more senior lifarians. “AT, Shelf F321!”

“On it!”

And so, one demon was gone.

And a quarter-demon went off in search.

He found Ablative Charming quickly enough, as the girl’s dress and presence commanded attention at every turn. She occupied an entire coffee table, resting on a beanbag, and was poised with her chin resting in her palm like a dedicated war general.

“I was looking for that book,” Turnus said, as his introduction, and sat down on a beanbag opposite.

“Well, know thy enemy,” she responded. “That’s why I’ve been reading this.”

“I’m not trying to get acquainted with my enemies. Turn to the section on Merlin’s origins.”

She did. The book was spread to an etching of Merlin’s mother - a priestess, talking to Vortigern, explaining the miraculous existence of her son. On the next page, was an etching of Merlin himself, being enchanted by Nimue, the second Lady of the Lake.

“This,” Turnus gestured to the spread of Merlin’s mother talking about her miraculous conception, “is what resulted in my father. Out of all the things I could have found out at my brother’s wedding, being a quarter-demon was not one of them.”

“You don’t _look_ a quarter-demon.”

That was not quite what Turnus wanted to hear.

“I mean, maybe if I squint. Now that you mention it, I guess your eyes are remarkably golden, but who pays attention to people’s eyes these days? From my personal experience, people swoon over my biceps.”

“This is so not relevant.” Turnus changed the subject. “What happened in the week I was gone?”

“Met my King Arthur. Funny boy. Not sure if I want to talk to him again,” Ablative frowned. Her eyes were still on the book. Clearly his question was a second concern. “Uh, Eleanor posted like two blogs onto Veritas, both of them on the safety of Wonderland, and apparently, she got backlash from other Arthurians, saying she should care about Camelot more.”

“Nice,” he said in response, keeping his eyes on the book. He tried his earnest to read upside down, but gave up halfway through a sentence, and spun the book around so he could read it properly. Ablative gave no care for that action, for she was already wrapped up in her own words.

“Oh, and the other day, POMPOUS was like--” Ablative raised her voice only slightly. She launched into a rambling about a prince that Turnus did not know, did not care for, and he tuned her out.

When she was done, he had gone over the entire page by himself, and was ready with questions. “You read, don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“How much do you know about the Theory of Magic?”

The Theory of Magic is a study that has persisted as long as memory. The existence of magic is undeniable - call it what you will. Energy, particle, wave, force. Human curiosity has persisted as long as memory.

“Uh,” said Ablative. “It’s never really been relevant to me. You could have just asked, like, ‘Ablative, how much do you know about quantum physics?’. They’re basically the same thing, right? Theory of Magic, and quantum physics.”

“Ehh,” said Turnus, who was sixteen and only understood things on a surface textbook and YouMirror videos level. “I guess. I just wanted someone to talk to about the fae-human-celestial division of magical expression.”

“I’m not equipped. Find yourself a new armoury.”

“Thank you anyway,” he said, and took out his MirrorPhone to take pictures of pages from the book, before returning to his station.

~*~

The magic of angels and the magic of demons are fundamentally the same. The only difference is morality and ethics, and even so, that’s just a philosophical discussion away.

To keep things short, Turnus checked out a few books on demon magic.

He talked to other demons.

He talked to demons born demons, and demons once human. Polynices, the lifairy assistant, tried to explain the experience, but he struggled. For most demons, celestial magic is so natural, that instinct blindness made their words fail.

To keep things shorter, a few incantations later, with every book checked out returned to the lifairy, Turnus Wyllt came to the conclusion that demonic magic, too, was barred from him.

~*~

Despite having gotten off work, Gabriel was still working. By the end of the semester, he was hexpected to sit his final exams for a diploma at Ever After High. To cram four years of an education into a few months of self-studying was no easy task.

Past routine had prepared him for this. Gabriel Fanfarinet was used to working a day job and taking night classes. He was used to keeping textbooks propped up at his desk, and used to keeping photos of his notes on his phone so he could snatch every second to study. There was never a period in his life that he worked harder than the years after he had lost his mother. It was the luck of having public housing that kept him stable, and public libraries that held books that taught him what to do and say.

He worked hard enough to be a legal scribe, and eventually to start clerking. Out of luck, he always seemed to be surrounded by people who “appreciated his work ethic”, as if the fairytale universe had purposefully put them there to keep him safe.

But it was luck, surely - just pure luck, that got him into the situation he was in now. Luck to have been the son of Fanfarinet, luck for Fanfarinet’s nephew to have found him and take him here to Ever After, the land where elites mingled with elites. He was one of them now.

At heart, Gabriel had hoped to go to university. He would have entered into a public university in Paris in the upcoming autumn, had Bastion not showed up at his workplace. That plan only changed slightly. Once summer fled, Gabriel would attend school again, at the University of Ever After.

Perhaps he was going to live destiny and die. But he was going to die as a learned young man, as his mother wanted him to be. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad.

Gabriel pushed his glasses back up his nose and pushed his textbook slightly to the side, then rested his head between a nest of his arms.

A pamphlet of “post-destiny villain resources” served as a bookmark. “ _The Pocket Reference Book For Navigating Legal Issues As A Destiny-Assigned Villain_ ” was used as a paperweight.

His rest was rudely interrupted by an email notification on his MirrorPhone.

Yet another document had been emailed to him, for him to review, to edit and send back. Even though he was kingdoms away from the people he’d been receiving documents from, Gabriel still felt like an intern assigned to fetching coffees and running things through paper shredders. It gave him an odd sort of nostalgia - a strange pain in remembering that time when he was clerking for lawyers. This was not much different, he reckoned, it was just that the people’s names were much more well-known.

“I hope I’m doing her proud…” he said aloud, to no one but himself, thinking of his mother. His voice trailed off.

He opened up the document, and kept it open on his laptop’s fourth desktop. Gabriel Fanfarinet learnt to compartmentalise his life early. One desktop for Ever After High work, one desktop for this consulting work, one desktop for his own personal life and the fourth for any fellow legacies (past and present) that wished to contact him.

After half an hour of combing through it and editing it to the best of his ability, Gabriel sent the document back, and returned to his studies.

He was just about to finish one practise question when he got another message - a call to MirrorChat from the House of the Adalinda. With a tired sigh, he accepted the question. It was only 8pm, after all.

The two queens, at this hour, were still in their day clothes. They were still in their office, with documents all spread out, and scribes and servants running around looking busy. Coco-Beatrice Adalinda, the Serpent Queen, had her laptop out, and was typing feverishly. She sat in the background, clearly concerned with other matters.

Concordance Beauty, the Princess Consort, was using her MirrorPad for the video call.

“Hi Gabriel,” said Concordance. “Glad you could make it at this hour. I would apologise for disturbing you, but I suppose there is nothing more urgent that this.”

“What’s so urgent?”

“My daughter. Pythia is always my greatest concern, you may understand if you ever have children one day, but that’s not very likely,” she said. “She’s always so busy, so studious, always doing her best. I’m just so sorry for her, now that her little playmate has run off.”

That’s a very weird way of saying close family friend, Gabriel wanted to say, but held his tongue. He was in the company of a royal, and that was absolutely not proper decorum. “And you already understand that whatever happened was not my decision.”

“No, I don’t know who that Grim Reaper thinks he is. Bastion Fanfarinet would probably never sink so low as to abandon Pythia, would he? Sometimes I wonder if Lanius just puts thoughts into his head, but don’t tell him that I said that, will you?”

Gabriel Fanfarinet only worked closely with Lanius on one thing, and that was maintaining the secret of Bastion Fanfarinet. He knew the only reason why the Adalindas were so involved was due to their close association with the boy, as well.

“No, I won’t,” he promised.

“Please do talk to her. You’re a Fanfarinet after all. That name has importance among D’Aulnoy legacies, you know. Pythia loves Ever After High a lot, and you will too, and I hope her last few years aren’t soured by this selfish action.”

“D’Aulnoy stories were once famous, more so than the Grimm stories of their time…” Gabriel reiterated. “That’s fine with me, your Highness. One has to maintain the tradition, after all.”

“There’s this cafe in BookEnd, I’ll send you the address. Go have a playdate there!”

The video ended, and the next email he received was a calendar invite.

Gabriel leaned back in his seat, and rested his eyes.

He thought about his own life. The falling of his own father, the rising of his status in this fairytale world.

Lanius Nightshade always did love an underdog story.


	9. Fatal Door of Destiny

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_And it was as if I had rapped sharply, four times, on the fatal door of destiny._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
The address Gabriel Fanfarinet was given was this anarcho-syndicalist cafe in BookEnd.

It was called The Little Red Hen Cafe. On the walls were posters for upcoming concerts and gigs and protests, and in the back of the shop was a bookstore of revolutionary material. The “new releases” section featured the faces of several prominent Ever After High students, most notably Raven Queen, and books promised “hexclusive interviews and updates of the recent Ever After High ‘Royal or Rebel’ drama”.

Gabriel ordered an espresso, and sat down with his MirrorBook out to continue his work.

He was half-an-hour early.

Half-an-hour early, because his mother had always taught him to be five minutes early to make the proper impression. Half-an-hour early, because he had looked up this place meticulously beforehand, found that it had free WiFi and a menu “so sustainable, it rivals people’s mindsets to the destiny system!”, and was intent on exploring it. Half-an-hour early, because he needed more than one coffee.

He ordered another shot, and finished the final conclusion of a paper he had to work out, and sent out a proposal for a new project to his current manager, and checked in on some of the students he was being a destiny consultant trainee for.

Pythia Adalinda arrived, fifteen minutes earlier than the scheduled time. She found him easily enough - it was not a busy cafe, and she stood right in front of the table, and stared him down with the most serious look.

As the daughter of the Serpent Queen in the Singing Springing Lark, Pythia Adalinda displayed her heritage proudly. The tote-style handbag she was carrying had handles wound like a pair of snakes, whose mouths were open, as if in attack or in pain. In formality, she extended her hand to shake.

We’ve met Pythia Adalinda before. She was Royal Student Council, she ran a lot of events around campus, and she made Turnus cry once.

“You’re Fanfarinet, right?” she asked. “My mother has a gift for you.”

She was destined not to be a princess, but a queen. She was meant to rule a kingdom whose greatest power would lie in trade and the economy. When her mother, the Serpent Queen, gifted things, the value of the gift was contained only within the price.

Pythia opened up her handbag, and took out a small box. “The casing is selkie skin,” she explained, as she pressed it into Gabriel’s hand. “The clasp is some alloy, that’s not really important. There’s some designs leather stamped on the box as well - all flowers. All of these are zinnia--” she pointed to a bouquet of flowers, of different colours -- “and the borders are meant to be starwort”.

“Thank you,” he said, a little bit stunned. Gabriel still wasn’t used to the luxuries of being a legacy. He undid the clasp and took a peek inside the box. Inside, were a pair of cufflinks. One was shaped like a LEGO brick, the other shaped like a pink convertible car.

“And one more thing - you’re like, legal to drink, so I don’t feel bad carrying this for you.” Once again, she opened up her handbag. From it, she took out a bottle of absinthe.

He smiled politely at the gift.

Gabriel Fanfarinet was not Bastion Fanfarinet. But when he smiled, it was the same enigmatic smile Bastion smiled with. Only the corners of their mouths would tug up, never the corners of their eyes.

“It feels like such an irresponsible gift, doesn’t it?” he said, picking up and admiring the absinthe. “I must come off as a very responsible person, then.” Gabriel did not seem particularly happy, though it could have just been his voice. Whatever it was, he at least seemed thankful.

When he was going to drink the liquor, he didn’t know. He didn’t have many friends outside of work in the first place to drink with, and surely he wasn’t going to drink alone. That would just be admitting to himself that he was in an unfortunate position.

“She’s very kind, your mother. Or rather, they’re both very kind, both of your mothers,” he added. “I’m sure you’re the same.”

“He was my best friend.”

Well, that threw Gabriel off-guard.

“I’m sorry?”

“Was. Up until Ever After High, we were best friends.”

He knew that Lanius Nightshade forbade him from communicating the existence of Bastion Fanfarinet, but Pythia Adalinda was on a very short list of people who was ‘in’ on what happened. This was one of the times he could speak freely.

“I’m sorry.”

It was silent. And the silence continued, and dragged on, and he noticed that her hands around the handle of her handbag were clenched very tight, and that her lip was quivering only ever-so-slightly, and perhaps his very presence was disturbing to the poor girl.

“I can leave, if you want. I appreciate the gifts, really. Thank you, Pythia.”

“Thank you, Fanfarinet,” she said.

Fanfarinet… an address by his legacy title. An address by his name - but it was his last name, the name that signified his family. She acknowledged his destiny, and who he was meant to be. She did not acknowledge him. Gabriel Fanfarinet, his own person.

“You’re an Ever After High student,” he said. “You must be busy. I don’t want to keep you.”

“Thank you,” and she left the cafe.

~*~

Up until Ever After High, Pythia Adalinda and Bastion Fanfarinet were best friends.

Even during Ever After High, he would spend the summers and other breaks at her kingdom, though it never quite felt the same as it did in their younger years. He grew concerned about his future, and he stressed over the rest of his life. It interrupted their conversations sometimes, especially while Pythia was trying to talk about her own future plans.

Bastion Fanfarinet knew who Turnus Wyllt was, back in his Ever After High days. He knew the boy from Day One. But no one had bothered scheduling a time for them to meet and talk and discuss, they had all hexpected everything to fall naturally in place with destiny come. Both boys were also too nervous to even approach one another. Turnus Wyllt was still too overwhelmed from the fairytale world; Bastion Fanfarinet had learnt to be good at being uptight. Besides, meeting the man you’re meant to serve or be served by is a grand occasion.

You have to get really good at timing things.

Pythia Adalinda knew that Bastion Fanfarinet knew who Turnus Wyllt was. Bastion Fanfarinet would sometimes point the prince out.

“There he is,” he said once.

At that one occasion, they were in the castle-teria, early morning. She remembered that they had their notes spread out on the table, taking up the space of at least two other people. The notes had a purpose - they were prepping for their first debate tournament. The notes had another purpose - Pythia barely saw her friend as much anymore, and keeping a table for themselves was a way of maximising their time together.

“My liege,” he added, in a tone she knew as sarcastic. He gritted his teeth a little.

“That’s him? Your prince?”

All long purple hair and skinny arms, Turnus Wyllt sat with his back turned to them. He seemed very concentrated on a discussion with the princes he was sitting among, and even had his phone pulled out to check statistics to back up his argument. To Pythia, he did not look like much, just yet another prince destined to be a prize for a protagonist princess.

“He’s very handsome,” Bastion said. “Very smart, too.” But there were no emotions behind those words. They were statements.

“He’s alright,” she said, and glanced back up at her friend. His eyes were dug into the back of Turnus’ head. “Do you think you’ll ever talk to him?”

“I’ll hurt myself at some later point.”

~*~

Turnus Wyllt sat in the archives of Ever After High, leafing through a book of financial records. After the failure with celestial magic, after everything that had happened over the past weeks, only stability seemed to clear his head. There were two things certain in life, people said, which were death and taxes.

He was mulling over the latter, trying to gather sources for his new blog post on tax evasion, when his reading was disrupted by the sound of footsteps.

The footsteps were very familiar. They were discordant and loud. It was Utility Fei.

The fertility witch looked tired -- or was it bored? While the footsteps sounded the same, there was something off about their gait, a sort of nervousness yet stridency. Turnus picked up on those things, and did not assume anything. Perhaps they were just having an off day.

“Hi Utility!” he said, still sitting in his spot. He waved at them.

“Turnus,” responded Utility. “Glad to see that you’re back. How is your brother?”

“I didn’t realise you knew them! Small world,” he frowned, then remembered that Sofia recommended him to Ever After High in the first place, so she must have connections, somewhere. “Small school.”

“Honourable, really,” they sat down at a spot near them, and absentmindedly pulled a record book from the nearby shelf. Utility leafed through it, without looking at the pages once, then put it back. “Lowly fertility witch, lowly non-legacy, getting to interact with all these eminent people… makes you yearn, sometimes.”

Turnus felt an odd sort of sadness. It was so difficult to be angry at the fact that he was at Ever After High, when he was beyond luckier than anyone he knew back home. Sofia really did mean the best for him.

“I met your friend,” he said, deciding to continue the conversation. Utility was so fascinating, with such connections, that it was worth asking about them. “Uh, I’m blanking on their name. A changeling, I think? Red hair… about this tall… Canadian.”

“Oh yes, Chanel! I was a plus one. Fun times, that wedding. Sofia was a little surprised to see me, I definitely changed from when she last knew me.”

“I did say hi to you, but we didn’t talk much.”

“It was a large gathering, that’d would have been really difficult,” Utility waved a hand, as if waving his concerns off with the hexcuse, or as if they were waving this conversational topic goodbye. “What are you reading?”

He lifted up the book in his hands. “Financial records.”

They shook their head, and decided that the best thing to do was to recline down on the floor, face-up. “Yawn. How boring. It’s all the same, isn’t it? Large sums of money spent here. And also there. Then you earn more large sums. And there’s a large sum of money that’s somewhere, unaccounted for.”

Turnus frowned. “Why are you lying down? Why aren’t you starting work?”

“Not my shift.”

Their eyes were fixated on the ceiling. One leg was bent acutely so their sole rested flat on the ground, and the other leg propped up on it. The changeling looked relaxed.

Placing the book of financial records down, Turnus moved to sit down on the floor, adjacent to the changeling.

“Alright,” spoke Utility. “Your brother’s wedding aside, what’s new in your life?”

“Uh, a lot,” Turnus frowned. He didn’t know where to begin.

“I’m prepared to listen through a lot.”

So he decided to isolate the important parts. “I realised my dad’s more like Merlin than I thought. He’s a cambion. And that makes me half-cambion, which is really ironic, I guess. Two mages as parents, and one of them is half-demon, and I have nothing magical about me? The universe makes funny plans.”

“Not as funny as the plans people make, but I see,” the changeling did not move from their position.

“How long are you going to stay like that?”

“You’re right - I am being a little recumbent in this body. I’ll shift soon.”

“Anyway--” and at that, Turnus was back on his feet, and intense enough in his thoughts to start pacing the room. “How valid is the trichotomy of human-fae-celestial in regards to magic? I tried to see if I could access celestial magic, but that’s closed to me as well. Listen, Utility, you must know, you’re both fae and witch.”

Their host’s body was still lying face-up on the floor. Very slowly, they raised their right hand off their stomach, to their face, to check their nails, as if they were bored by Turnus’ ramblings. Then, they snapped their fingers.

Last time Utility snapped their fingers, Turnus recognised the effects of the magic they performed as that reminiscent of a witch. Last time, Utility had conjured a bouquet of rhododendrons.

This time, instead of a bouquet in their hand, petal-like magical effects enveloped Utility, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis. The petals were translucent. Once they wrapped around the changeling, if you squint, you could make out Utility’s form, which soon seemed to liquidise and reshape.

Rhododendrons… Turnus had never bothered learning the meanings of flowers. But your narrator has, and I’ll tell you now: it symbolises danger. Despite its beauty, all parts of the plant are poisonous.

A bouquet is not a gift. It is a warning.

“Both fae and witch,” Utility stood up, in a body that mirrored Turnus’ own. The green hair was now purple, and no longer done up in buns, but loose. Their body was much taller and thinner, and their eyes were not a murky brown, but shining gold. “Both fae and witch, fine. Maybe I’ll give demon a bit of a spin as well.”

When they stood, it was nothing like how Turnus stood, none of the slouched back and awkward disposition. They seemed more in command of a body that Turnus never associated with, and despite being the same height, seemed to tower.

“That’s… you’re not… you’re not me,” he said. He could not see Turnus Wyllt in the body that was facing him.

“No, but are you even yourself?” asked the changeling. “Take a good look, I have a few friends of mine to give you time and space.”

Turnus yelled as he felt a backwards pull into a mirror portal that manifested behind him. The force of the pull - it was directed at his hair, at his clothes, all the things he had on him that were dead and unaffected by his anti-magic nature.

Changelings have a tendency to replace beautiful people, and Utility Fei likes to play prince.

~*~

“You want a more ordered world, right? Then you have to funnel all the rest of that chaos somewhere else. Second Law of Thermodynamics, or whatever.”

~*~

“See, software and the fae are very similar. They’re both very good at following very precise instructions.”

~*~

“Rule of three. Remember the rule of three. You’re fairytales, for von Schonwerth’s sake, learn your tropes.”

~*~

The two-year anniversary of being Utility Fei was about two months ago. The changeling had celebrated it alone. It was a weekend and they spent it eating good food and taking naps.

There was a reason why they had been Utility Fei. The fertility-witch-to-be had three things they wanted: grant money, access to private patient data, and this one really cool spectrometry machine present in the laboratory they worked under.

Right now, in the archives, the changeling was talking to themself. ‘Right, Utility, you’ve got this’, then quickly reprimanded themselves. “You’re not Utility Fei anymore,” they said, this time aloud, into the empty shelves of the archival room. “You’re Turnus Wyllt. Right, Turnus, collect yourself.” Feiymann paced the room in their new body. The new center of gravity will be something to quickly adjust to, and the more elevated height made them briefly dizzy.

For the narrator’s sake, and for the sake of ease on our readers, we must have a change in terminology for our characters.

Turnus Wyllt, our favourite human, is Turnus Wyllt, as always.

The fae that once disguised themselves as Utility Fei, but who is now Turnus Wyllt, shall be referred to by the name most default to them: Feiymann.

And the human that is Utility Fei--

We’ll see about that.


	10. Thoughts of a Free Man

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_At the beginning of my imprisonment however, what I found most difficult was that I had the thoughts of a free man._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
Fairyland is not a singular entity.

There are places scattered, known as Fairyland everywhere, just as Alexander the Great scattered the name ‘Alexandria’ onto cities he conquered, just as names from the British Isles proliferate through the Commonwealth.

Fairyland, at its most fundamental, is not a place name that holds any specificity. It is but a description: the land of the fae.

Stepping into the Fairyland that the portal dragged him in was like stepping into a giant magnetic field, where the forces of fae magic pulled you strongly in all directions, that everything cancelled out and felt like nothing at all. Turnus would, typically, feel the force of a fairy if one approached him on Earth, but here, in Fairyland, because the magical forces around him were so great, he scarcely felt their presence at all. Was this how most people interacted with the world?

Fae Security had informed him that he’d be under surveillance, but he was permitted to make a home for himself in Fairyland if he so wished. Turnus asked about his time of stay. The answer was only one word ‘indeterminable’.

He wasn’t sure what he did. He was very sure he didn’t deserve this.

The Fairyland was a town enveloped by a dense forest that served as a Faeraday’s Page, caging the town from external signals. That meant Turnus’ phone signal was out, so there was no chance for him to go on his parents’ offer to go back to Canada.

Turnus knew enough rules about interacting with the fae. Don’t eat their food. Don’t give your name. Don’t accept any offers or deals without an equal exchange. The fae were all about equal exchange. It was a finnicky line to draw. He could offer favours, but the reaction towards a favour would depend on whether the interpretation was goodwill or sneering charity.

“Where would I live? Sleep? What if I go hungry?”

“There’s a place that we call the Nursery, we’ll take you there,” responded the nondescript fae security. “You’d find that time passes more quickly than you’d think.”

The answer to the food question was addressed at the Nursery.

Thankfully, Feiynman was not fond of the idea of their hosts dying under their care. That would be most irresponsible. In the Nursery, the changeling owned a dedicated pantry, with a note that use phrasing explicitly to state that the food was not a favour, it was not a gift, but an hexpectation. Take the food you wish, cook the food however you wish, use the utilities and apparati provided, and do not regard it as a favour. It is an expectation. When you are under the care of Feiynman, it is not because of charity.

~*~

Turnus lives. That statement is fact. He is fantastic at many things, and one of them is survival in an unaccommodating world.

~*~

Families with magical heritage have an additional milestone: the appearance of one’s first magic.

Brutus was a late bloomer, and his parents worried. But at age eight, the first signs of magic started to show, and by eight ten, he was out-performing all his peers.

Around that time, Turnus Wyllt was about to be born.

At age three, a toddler Turnus Wyllt once clapped his hands, and remnants of magic left them, black and glitter-like, and hovered around him like a thundercloud. Around about the same time, three magical devices in the house broke that day.

Contrary to being angry, his parents were spellebatory. There was no need to worry about a son who could not do magic.

But how wrong they were. Every other instance of involuntary magic Turnus showed got increasingly weaker, and despite being trained on voluntary magical hexercises, he could produce nothing on command. By the time Turnus turned five, they opted for a magicless primary school as they did for Brutus’ early schooling career, hoping that lack of deviance would prevent bullying.

Perhaps, by age eight, Turnus would have become like his brother.

By age ten, they had given up.

Tutors tried and failed. Mage summer camps had come and gone, but Turnus had such a miserable time one year that he would absolutely refuse to go again. Magical consultants were hired. He was sent to medical mage professionals, in hopes of finding a source to this “dysfunction”, some scientific fundamental hexplanation.

To no avail.

“Whatever,” said Turnus, who was young and found other things he cared about more. Board games, for one thing, and books, for the other. During his visits to the doctors, he would do his maths problems, and once he got to talk face-to-face with the medical professionals who investigated him, would tell in great deal about all the mathematics competitions he was participating in.

“Very proud of you, young Wyllt,” the medical professionals would respond. “You’re such a smart boy, I’m sure you would have whooped my ass in any school you went to.”

“Maman says you shouldn’t swear,” he said, then added, in a lower tone. “Ass.”

 _I’m bringing my girlfriend home to meet Maman and Papa for Thanksgiving_ , Brutus hexted Turnus one day. Our favourite boy was thirteen then. _Please please please please please be on your best behaviour, I trust you lots!!_

Sofia Wares was a favourite of the family instantly. If being loved was a job offer and her presence was her resume, she would have been hired on the spot.

Turnus had recently picked up a new hobby, and he became obsessed with it. It was an inexpensive hobby: all one needed was a deck of cards and the resilience to practise and practise. He could not do magic, but Turnus Wyllt learnt to love magic tricks.

He was intent on impressing Sofia with them. He knew that Brutus only ever dated other wizards - his older brother’s studies were too important and meaningful for his significant other not to be someone on par with him. Also, the magic tricks served as a litmus test: if any SO mocked him or demonstrated some degree of pity, Turnus would greet them with scorn, and ensure that Brutus knew.

A few tricks in after dinner, and Sofia Wares was already skeptical. “Are you sure you’re not magic?” she said in a voice that could be both serious and joking. “Let’s test that out.”

She never left her house without her bag full of magical devices. One of which was a sensor. It had a working radius of 1m, and cast a warm blue glow over any magical spells or effects that were cast. As the sensor acted on a passive subject, it could still be used on Turnus.

She put it down below his hands. “Do it again.”

A magician never repeats a trick, but Turnus was earnest to impress.

“I see now!” said Sofia, when Turnus was halfway through the trick. “You flip the deck at this point, so the card on top is now at the bottom, then you shuffled without disturbing the order. Very subtle, I’m impressed.”

“Oh,” said Turnus, who was a little miffed though impressed. “At least you didn’t work out the rest.”

She didn’t. But Turnus was so impressed that he told her how it worked anyway, and after handing her the deck of cards he was using, she had mastered the trick by the end of the evening.

Sofia was, quite possibly, the best girlfriend that Brutus Wyllt ever had. Turnus adored her. When he had a new magic trick on hand, he would show her and then teach her. Not even his own brother was cool enough to be part of his “magician’s circle”, Turnus thought. Only Sofia and his mother were.

~*~

“You can go home now.”

The fairy guards stared Utility Feng right in the eyes.

“You’re kidding,” said the witch. They, and the guards with them, were all gathered at a small table in a creperie in this Fairyland.

“No, we’re adulting,” said one of the guards. “This is part of our job, I’m forced to deal with emotional labour to convey this information. We’re not kidding. We’re adulting.”

An overworked employee came out with their crepes, and conversation was temporarily halted so that they could all say ‘thank you’, obtain a ‘you’re welcome’, and to take at least one bite of the food.

“I don’t like that word,” Utility said. “Adulting. It’s so silly. It makes being a responsible person sound like a tedious task.”

“That’s unfortunate,” said a different guard. “Still, you’re free to go.”

“Did Feiynman have a change of heart or something? Who operated on them?”

“Change of face, actually.”

“Oh! There’s a new human, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“I want to meet them, then,” Utility said. “It’s tradition, after all.”

“Not in any stories.”

“No, not on paper. It’s not a story written down. It’s just the story I happen to be living. I just want to meet the next person in our lineage. I’m going home - home in Fairyland.”

Home in Fairyland, to Utility Feng, was the Nursery. That was Feiynman’s house here, which was often only habited by their current host. Utility liked to have guests over for tea parties, because hexistence was lonely, and the fae were fun company. They liked fae a lot more than they liked humans, and they had used up a lot of mason jars to collect magical samples to analyse back in the lab… if they ever wanted to return to the lab.

It had been _years_ since they thought about their job. Industry was a drag. Good on Feiynman then, for doing all the dirty work.

They unlocked the door, and kicked it open.

“Sup.”

“ALSDFKAFSDKL,” said a voice in the house.

They frowned, and listened intently for the source of the scream. Going upstairs to the kitchen, they found a Turnus Wyllt making himself instant mac and cheese.

Utility Feng, in all their scrutinising scientific prowess, frowned once more and tried to assess this weird human.

However, this weird human was not taking too well to them. He shouted, “YOU” and threw the box of instant mac at them. It hit them on the nose. Utility Feng did not bother to duck.

“You!” the weird human said once more. “Who are you really?”

“I’m Utility Feng. I do like, science and stuff.”

“I met a Utility _Fei_! They did not do ‘science and stuff’. They did ‘shady stuff, and more shady stuff’.”

“Oh, so you met Feiynman. _I’m_ Utility _Feng_. And I’m way cooler. And my nose hurts right now.”

His frowned mirrored theirs. “Okay, fine. I’m Turnus, and if this Feiynman is who I think it is, then _they’re_ Turnus Wyllt now.”

“One of us! One of us!”

“Us?”

“See, I’m not the first human to be replaced by Feiynman. I’m definitely not the last, given that you’re here,” Utility hexplained. “See, Turner, when I first arrived at the Nursery, I was greeted by another human here. She was wonderful. Now I get to be the previous human greeting you. I feel old, now!”

“It’s Turnus,” he corrected.

How would he know that they weren't a fae here to trick him? The magical pressure of Fairyland made a fae's magical presence undetectable. How would he know that they were human? And whether they be fae or human, that was no indication of goodness or badness anyway.

“I’m sixteen,” he began to introduce himself, but was suddenly interrupted.

“Oh my goodness, you’re a baby,” said the witch. “Oh no, your poor parents.”

“I’m at boarding school,” he said, and his heart sunk. What had his parents told him the last time he had seen them? They said that they would pull him out of school and let him go back to Canada, no questions asked. This was the first time in which Turnus felt like he needed to truly go home, and there was no way of contacting them here.

“I guess that’s better! When I was in boarding school, my parents knew nothing!”

It was so strange, talking to this witch who had the face of the changeling. Or rather, talking to the true face of the witch, who had been replaced by the changeling he had known. All of this was making Turnus’ head rather hurt.

~*~

Even in Fairyland, Utility had a job. Captivity fries your brain, they said. Psychological studies have shown that one's mood is at its worst when you do nothing. Throughout the day, Utility worked at a clinic, as a medical scribe. They were fond of the pay, and the doctors there promised to write them a glowing recommendation letter. Fertility witches were not in high demand at this Fairyland, and were mostly outsourced, so Utility had to find an adjacent line of work.

But Turnus did not have his heart set on finding a job here. The only thing that had invigorated him for the past weeks had been his blog. He was also sixteen, and very very angry.

There was so much left to do in the human world. He had learnt so many things - Gabriel Fanfarinet having replaced Bastion, his father's cambion identity, and the institutional biases of upholding legacy… The third thing he had hoped to talk more about on his blog, and with the Faeraday Page set up here, there was no connection to the outer MirrorNet.

Turnus wanted to write. From Veritas, he had realised that he only ever felt like himself when thinking, when speaking, when putting words onto a laptop screen or a page. Turnus Wyllt, in his own mind, was words. This physical form was an inconvenient vessel, an eggshell inside of which held a young chick incubating. If he could dissolve himself of this corporeal form, Turnus thought, then people would never get to objectify him, then they would be forced to take him seriously.

Being in this Fairyland gave him something to write about. During the day, when faeries were out and working, he would explore the place, make observations and try to talk to the citizens here.

Fae were not as material as human civilisation is. In hexchange for a story or life advice, they would deal out whatever they thought was worth the words. Equal hexchange... that was a principle that Turnus made sure to remember. Do not accept favours, he reminded himself. But gifts will be rewarded.

What a chaotically lawful system, he thought.

A leather binding store sold notebooks. He obtained one, using words to etch out a recent controversy regarding wonder depletion.

The stories he told were mostly just taken from his blog, but he swiftly ran out of those. The fae, often fascinated by a human in the realm, knowing that humans replaced by changelings were often beautiful or clever or worthwhile in some capitalist way, asked Turnus for life stories.

He had felt his life was dull, compared to the lives of others at Ever After High, until he found anecdotes and incidents. Turnus read and wrote fiction enough to know that it was more so how you narrated something than what you narrated that made work engaging. Never had he been forced to push his limits until now.

For interviews, he had a list of questions prepared. Sometimes it wasn't only stories he hexchanged - Feiynman had decks of cards stashed in a game room, so Turnus taught people simple magic tricks. "I know you can do real magic," he said, "and I don't want to undermine that. I've also been told that stories are magic of some sort, specifically conjuration. For those, I also offer magic of some degree - a magician too makes things appear real."

For Utility Feng's life stories, Turnus hexchanged nothing for them other than an attentive ear. People do like talking about themselves, as any detective or news reporter or overworked protagonist suffering through a villain's monologue would tell you. When they got off work, it was usually dinner time. And thankful for human interaction, conversation rarely stood stagnant.

“When were you transformed?” Turnus had asked. More questions followed. What was their job hexactly? Did they have pets?

The sacrifice he had made to be surrounded by the legacies of Ever After, to have the prestige of the school's diploma was that of an ordinary life. Utility Feng was an ordinary witch. But even ordinary lives were filled with extraordinary stories.

~*~

To write was no substitute for living.

One evening, he was asked a simple question: "how are you doing?"

“I’m bored, Utility. I don’t want to be here for longer than I have to be.” Turnus rolled back in his seat, and stared pointedly at the ceiling.

“Feiynman has a board game collection! Let’s play chess or something! Do you like chess?” A distraction. Utility Feng loved living in Fairyland. Turnus knew that, from how happier they were when recounting anecdotes that took place here, than back in the human world. When he rambled about feeling trapped, he felt Utility struggled to emphasise.

“I know how to play,” said Turnus.

He assumed most people did. It was one of the hobbies you were hexpected to learn if teachers thought you were smart. People had told him that the purpose of chess was to teach you how to ‘think ahead’ and ‘reflect deeply on your decisions and the consequences of them’. The only things Turnus actually managed to get out of chess were participation trophies at chess tournaments.

“I’ll rather play something else, though. Do you know what a tabletop game is?”

Utility knew, but they had never played. So Turnus drew up some rules, and used some coinage from Fairyland to determine "failures" and "successes".

One-on-one tabletop was not something Turnus was used to, but he did his best. Utility was not used to improv, but they did their best. Their storyline was a bit contrived, and their characters were very stock. Turnus threw in all the twists he could think of, and crafted a world that he thought the scientist would enjoy. The setting was a terraformed moon. The setting was science in a world where politics was actively holding its development back.

“She’s holding a meeting…” said Turnus, narrating. “The walls of the room are marble, sleek and cold and gilded. Across her, two princes from nations allied with her sit. The viewer recognises them as--”

The real Utility Feng listened intently and played along with the story. There were no “NPCs” and “Player Characters”, the two just picked up and controlled whatever character they wanted to.

This campaign went on for three or so evenings.

“What’s with the watch?” Utility asked, on the third and final. “You keep bringing it up.”

“I think watches can be cool,” he said, thinking of one particular watch. That seemed so long ago, that day Airmid Valerian showed him the Scrollex he was gifted. That Scrollex… the first piece of evidence in the existence of Bastion Fanfarinet. Without having seen that watch, Turnus realised, he wouldn’t be in a Fairyland right now.


	11. Enough Memories

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_I realised that a man who had only lived for a single day could easily live a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from getting bored._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
“I know people. I know other things, and one is that Turnus is very, very smart, we all know this. He is also very, very diligent, which is what you should tell him.”

"I'm always worried about my son."

"And I know that. But in any environment, he'd flourish."

"Does he even feel supported?"

"I'll make sure of that. And I'll make sure he has a life where he can support himself."

“What are you thinking of?”

“Ever After High.”

There was a notable pause at the table. The sorceress sighed a little. Across from her, the wizard looked hopeful and nervous.

Sofia Wares knew that Brutus' family liked her a lot. She liked them a lot, and no amount of affirmation could dissolve her insecurity. Her life experience has taught her one lesson: be careful of changing times. Like a new sapling setting roots, she learnt to value one thing over all: stability.

A server placed food down on the table, then conversation resumed after.

“Sofia,” said Turnus’ mother. “One thing. Promise me this.”

“Alright.”

“Prestige means nothing to me if Turnus isn’t happy. In no universe will we ever accept a role in which Turnus does not end up happily ever after.”

“I can do that.”

Aged fourteen and midway through the last semester of middle school, Turnus Wyllt received a letter.

_Dear Turnus Wyllt, You have been invited to attend Ever After High as the next King Merlin’s son in the fairytale by Madame D’Aulnoy, The Princess Mayblossom._

~*~

When the fairy security had pulled Turnus into the portal, the one thing they took from him was his keys. In preparation for the hexchange, Feiynman already had a MirrorBook and a MirrorPhone, identical to Turnus' in appearance prepared, had looked into the syllabi of his courses for the next few weeks, and purchased pre-loaded bank cards to make necessary purchases. It was a lot less to do than in most cases - when people had jobs and regular interactions with their family - and honestly, a little refreshing.

It does well to deteriorate the ties you had with close friends. Thankfully, Turnus had set that bridge on with spellfire, and any interaction with French King Squad started to feel tense.

Feiynman wasn't entirely sure why Turnus posed a threat. Certainly, people in the Authorities did not like him, did not like his perpetual questioning of the world, did not like how he would compile statistics and studies on his blog and summarise them in an accessible format. The boy was sixteen, and no way did most people even take him seriously.

Running Veritas was simple - all Feiynman did was announce a hiatus. No need for deletion, they reckoned. That would have been suspicious, and MirrorNet archives of the blog were already made.

Feiynman hated living as a child, but he couldn't deny that it was much simpler. No wonder why other changelings preferred to replace beautiful babies, for there was no intense amounts of preparation. The lack of control over their own lives meant the ability to more easily assume the appearance people wanted.

Why did he even replace Turnus? Higher-ups. He had been asked specifically to, and was told that the pay was good. Besides, Utility Feng's funding was about to run out, and Feiynman was getting sick of all the industry science work, as fun as being Utility was.

The pay had to be good. That was the thing that got Feiynman living as a teenager. But he was the one changeling who had interacted with Turnus the most, he was the best man for the job.

All and all, it was like sponsoring an Athenian play festival. Mere obligation.

~*~

“I am stepping in. I don’t care, I’m stepping in.”

Orleans’ words at bro-eakfast was met with skepticism from the table. Ramsey started to look rather engrossed at his yoghurt cup (with mixed berries - nothing less for the prince), and Gladiolus frowned disapprovingly.

“He is my roommate! He barely says ‘hi’ when he’s in the room with me! I never find him around on campus, and he’s so quiet in classes! I don’t know what happened! It’s disturbing me!”

“Maybe you should chill,” Ramsey said.

With a nod from Gladiolus, Orleans said no more at the table.

But Orleans was a true prince, he was a hextbook prince, and princes in fairytales do not listen to skeptics. Like any prince, he was out there to prove himself right. Like a true prince, he set out on a little adventure to locate Turnus.

With Turnus’ predictable schedule, it was easy enough. On a day when Turnus was leaving late from the lifairy, Orleans set his ‘confrontation’ in motion.

“Turnus!” Orleans said to catch his attention.

The future King of the Gold Mines often had his sword in his scabbard, but this time, instead of the scabbard on his belt, it was in his hand. With all the grace he knew, he used the scabbard to block who he thought was Turnus between the wall and from escape.

“I don’t care if you don’t talk to me ever again! At least, after this! But I want you to talk to me now! I miss you!”

“Uhhh,” said Feiynman, who was trying to find a reasonable way of getting past the scabbard held across his body.

For the first time in days, Orleans got a close look at the body he thought was Turnus. More specifically, one look at those gold, cambion eyes, and the perceived mental image Orleans had shifted. Much like how an iridescent surface changes colour depending on the angle you view it at, the face of “Turnus” changed as Orleans turned his head ever-so-slightly side to side. At some points, a handsome prince. At others, a fearsome fae.

“Who are you?” Orleans took a wide step back, and held sword and scabbard in front of it. “Where’s Turnus? Where’s my friend?”

Orleans le Nouveau would probably describe his ‘Magic Touch’ as ‘owning a monopoly’. But his actual destiny-given magic touch was a lot different. He could see through magical disguises.

“Don’t you recognise me?” Feiynman asked. “Orleans?”

The prince still had sword and scabbard in hand, but his face betrayed the fearless air he was trying to portray. So, Orleans le Nouveau turned heel, and ran.

He ran to where he knew where Ramsey was.

Where Ramsey was, was also where Gladiolus was. At the school gym, the mermaid was lifting, and Ramsey was spotting him. By spotting him, we mean that Ramsey had a smoothie in his hand, was drinking the smoothie, and absolutely not being a spot-on bro by looking out for Gladiolus properly.

“Guys,” Orleans announced. "There's something wrong with Turnus."

"Yeah, he's being an antisocial butt," said Ramsey.

"Yes, but like, no."

"I'm busy getting gains, Orleans," added Gladiolus.

"That's so not bro of you, Gladi. Wait, actually, that's very bro of you. But not the sort of bro that we exemplify!"

Orleans had half a mind to launch into a quick lecture about respecting other people and prioritising your time, but nothing more than his roommate weighed down his mind right now. In his own story, Orleans was destined to be kidnapped by a deceptive fairy who could shift shapes, which was exactly what was happening to Turnus! Oh, what a dastardly villain. If he could defeat this changeling - which he recognised instantly to be a changeling, then he would know in his heart that he would be an unparalleled King of the Gold Mines.

Much like his weapon of choice, Orleans got to the point.

“Turnus is a changeling and… I’m going to fight him.”

Out of his friends, and out of most people he knew, Orleans le Nouveau was the boy who best exemplified _prince_.

~*~

In the style of Utility Feng, Turnus was getting really good at sitting outside in Fairyland, eating crepes. Whatever this place was, even with other people, even with the ability to leave his house, it was still glorified prisonment. There were so many vices here that a human could lose themself to - the fairy wine, the weekly festivals, the charmingness of a small town existence far away from the rest of the world.

For Utility Feng, perhaps that was why they insisted on staying. Understandable, they were only human.

Even though he hoped to lose himself in his writing, Turnus Wyllt thought a lot about his old life. He clung to those memories. In his daydreams, he could remember more details and build up a reminder to himself. Give it two years, probably, and he’d return. That was how long Feiynman lived as each host, right?

In a way, both Ever After High and Fairyland were appealing, for different reasons. In another way, they were both displeasing, and this reason was the same. There were conditions put, things that you had to follow, in order to maximise your fulfillment in an existence here. Turnus extrapolated that idea to other settings - not just school, not just here, and decided that it was the case anywhere.

There was no absolute control anywhere. But to be as happy as possible, you should maximise what control you did have.

All of these were thoughts that he had while eating that crepe. He had about finished his food when a small truck had pulled up to the shop he was outside, and crates were being unloaded. A young fae rushed out of the door, and looked around for the delivery. While he did so, he caught Turnus in his line of sight.

Turnus caught a particular look in his eyes - perhaps a look of recognition, or acknowledgement. Perhaps it was concern. Either way, it was not the sort of look you would give a stranger.

“Are you looking for something?” Turnus asked. He thought of other phrases he could have responded with _‘Did you need something?’ ‘What’s wrong?’_ and considered all the way fairy logic could twist his statements.

“No, not really. Though, I have some heavy things I need to lift.”

“A favour for your name?”

“Polyfaemus,” and he gestured to the crates outside.

While helping him lift the boxes into the woodwork shop, further information was gathered on the fairy. He was an apprentice, and had been for over a year already. One day, he hoped to move out of Fairyland. Polyfaemus said no more on himself, but plenty on his work. In the store, he gestured to several of his carvings and sculptures. With a neat ponytail, he kept his hair out of his face, and with a paint-stained apron, he kept himself clean. Polyfaemus walked with a sharp delicate stride, like a dragonfly dipping itself in the water.

Near the back of the shop was a sculpture about Turnus' height. It was always covered by tarp, as the woodworker said that he feared that it would be damaged.

"A commission," he said when Turnus asked about it. "Westerwood, this one is. I'm working on it for my apprenticeship."

Very swiftly, Polyfaemus moved onto other items in the shop. "Look at this," he held up a slab of amber in line with Turnus' eyes. "Gorgeous colour, isn't it? When the light shines through, I feel like it glows like gold."

No matter when Turnus visited, taking notes for his writing, ready to gather all the material he could, Polyfaemus would talk without stopping. The majority of his words were rambles about new equipment or new products that came in: "And I finally got this magical torque wrench -”, “these paints--”, and he would hold it up to the light, in line with Turnus’ face, like a moon eclipsing the sun.

Turnus was forbidden from taking photos, according to the shop's protocol, and he wasn't prepared to upset this labourer. In his notebook, he kept a pen sketch of the tarp-covered work.

~*~

Lucidity of dreams is increased by keeping a dream journal. Turnus did just that.

He did dream of Bastion Fanfarinet with frequency. In these dreams, it had changed from merely staring at the boy, to talking to him directly. In real life, that had never once happened. But in his dreams, they would sit down, exchange words and phrases. Turnus remembered none of what he said.

Those dreams often prompted him the next morning to think about what he knew. Very little, it turned out.

Sometimes, he dreamt of his love. Montreal, in the winter, with the snowfall. Montreal, in the summer, in the labyrinth of the Underground City. Montreal, where his parents promised him he could always return to.

Eventually, he got a hold of lucidity enough to recognise himself dreaming. Right now, he was standing on a nondescript flat plane, where he found Bastion Fanfarinet.

"Bastion," Turnus said in the dream. "I want to know you, Bastion."

"How can you know me? I'm in your dream, and your brain can only dream what you already know."

"Please."

"Can't you do better things?"

He was right. Turnus decided that dream him should be taking advantage of this lucidity. So, he chose to fly in his dream. Across the landscape, he flew, and stopped to land on a chapel's roof. He turned to his left, and saw Bastion was right next to him.

"Nice of you to join me," said Turnus.

"Nice? I'm in your dream. I'm you, joining you, Turnus."

"I would like to talk to you.".

"You can't."

"So I'm guess I'm just talking to myself."

"That's not a thing you do enough," spoke dream Bastion. "If I can help you now--"

"No! I don't want you to help me now! I don't want to talk to myself! I want to talk to you, Bastion! I want answers! And truth!"

"This version of me is in your head! You can't escape it!"

"Yes I can! And I will! Goodbye!" and he ran off the roof.

Turnus woke up as soon as his dream self hit the concrete dream floor. He turned his head to look at the clock on the wall. 10am.

~*~

A hundred and fifty steps in a set of seven-league boots away, a cambion in Montreal woke up, shaking. Near his stomach, he felt a stitch, a sharp acidic pain, and started to cry softly.

It was 4am in the morning there.

He reached for the hand of his wife who was sleeping by his side.

"Love," he said softly. "I dreamt again."

"Hmm?" she said, pulling herself awake, and pulling him into her arms. "Do we need to go downstairs? Get the pancakes out?"

He brought his fingers up to his forehead to press on it. "No… I'm fine. The dream…"

"Say it."

"I'm walking along a river. A body is floating in it, I pull it out, wrap it up in warm clothes and try to speak to it. The moment I turn it around to see its face, it's cold, icy and wooden. I'm petrified."

She was silent.

"I can't make sense of it yet."

"Does it affect them?"

The house always felt empty without the boys. Holidays were the best times for the Wyllts - noise and laughter would ring in the household, there would be life among the study and work and magic.

And as if to reassure no one but herself, the mother said, "If Turnus wasn't okay, he would let us know."

~*~

After breakfast, Turnus debated on taking a nap. He eventually decided against that, and instead worked more on the campaign he was writing for Utility, until it was the time that corresponded to their lunch break.

He went out into Fairyland to find them. The fertility witch was done with their food, and was reading a newspaper outside their workplace. He went up to them, and stated very clearly:

"I need a favour."

"Be careful with that word in the faerie realm," they said. "You need an act of friendship."

"I need an act of friendship."

"Shoot."

"Nightmare Fog."

There was a pause. "I don't think we have that in stock. We might have the raw ingredients for it, though. Just got a batch of sandman sand in."

"Great. I want it."

"Can you even use Nightmare Fog?"

"It acts passively, doesn't it?"

"Hmm. Alright, I'll see what I can do."

~*~

The wizard Merlin is known best in the old literature for his prophecy. For telling you which dragons fought which dragons, which successations of kings followed.

Brutus Wyllt's job was in magical mathematical modelling. His main selling skills was in prophecy, though they were most poignant and concrete and easily understood to him when they came to him through dreams. Needless to say, he took a lot of naps on the job.

He was not working right now. He was on his honeymoon.

It was on his honeymoon in which he received a concerning message.


	12. Being Superfluous

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_I also couldn't explain the bizarre impression I had of being superfluous, a little as if I were an intruder._

|  | 

”  
  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
There is a story about a girl who agrees to marry the Devil. So devious and mischievous and downright insufferable was she, that Hell ordered her to be returned.

~*~

“Hello Your Highness, I’m Orleans le Nouveau, the next King of the Gold Mines, and the roommate of your brother, Turnus Wyllt. I’ve been having a few issues with him, most notably, he’s been replaced by a changeling. Would you please advise on what to do in this situation?"

With a quick press of a button, Orleans sent the above message through the InkedIn app. Soon, he saw three dots indicating typing.

“oh no” was Brutus’ first message. His next message was “Oh wait, I can easily get a person on this.”

Orleans typed up a response. “Faetastic! Thank you so much. I was so worried. He was not talking to me at all, and I felt so horrible.”

“Cool, you’re being forwarded to my wife now.” followed by a “Wow! I can’t believe I get to say ‘my wife’, this is incredible.”

~*~

A day later, at the steps of Ever After High, arrived a particular Sofia Wares. She had already set her suitcases down at a friend’s place in BookEnd, and carried with her one tote-style handbag.

For a brief moment, she looked like one of those doctors you would summon to your house, with their bag of medical supplies, ready to scrutinise. Blink again, and she was just a well-dressed computer engineer.

Given that the other two were busy, Orleans went down to greet her by himself.

She hexplained her living situation, and said not to worry about Brutus, who was here with her in BookEnd. He was working on settling into their place of temporary stay. Yes, Sofia said, the message had cut into the honeymoon, but Turnus’ life was urgent and important, and a holiday was not. Besides, from experience, she should be one of the better people to deal with such a situation.

“Have you isolated the changeling?” she said.

“He lives in my dorm room,” Orleans pointed out. “That’s not a difficult task. He’s so cocky about it, though, and insists that they’ve seen ‘all the tricks’.”

“All the tricks? Boiling water in eggshells, or beer in walnuts, or throwing him into the lake… I feel like I would always feel bad if I ever had to beat out a changeling with a switch, I’m sure there’s laws against that now.” Sofia responded to Orleans in such a way that it seemed like she was talking only to herself.

First, Sofia had to go to the administrative offices, show some ID, to get the necessary access into the dormitory buildings. Every step into the building made her feel old. How long has it been since her own school days? Being sixteen was over eleven years ago.

The room Orleans and Turnus shared had two symbols on their door. A gold bar with a palm tree stamped on top of it, and a generic set of sparkles. She pushed open the door, where she came face-to-face with the face of her brother-in-law.

"There he is," said Orleans from behind her.

"You," said the changeling Turnus.

"Of course it's you," said Sofia. "Feiynman. How many years has it been?"

"Four, if you're calculating it from when we left. Six, if you're measuring from the start. I don't miss being you, Sofia, if that's a concern."

She shook her head. "And I don't miss that either. I do miss Turnus, though. What are you doing to this poor sap?"

"My best. Higher-up request."

"Seems very boring, the life of that higher-up then. Infecting teenagers? Literal children!"

"You speak as if being replaced is a negative thing! Think, Sofia! If I weren't there, if I were never around, where would you be right now? Where word your darling brother-in-law be?" Feiynman's eyes glowed a deep yellow. "How would you know so many people? Would Turnus have ever set foot at Ever After High?"

"Forgive me, then. For thinking I should still take advantage of something horrible." Her voice was sarcastic. She did not even take a single step closer, but stood firm where she was.

The changeling that took the appearance of Turnus remained in his seat. It was a spinning office chair. Behind him, was Turnus' bookshelf of figurines and books. One leg over the other, both arms on the armrest - it was a pose almost comically diabolical.

"We'll meet again, Feiynman."

"Good luck, Sofia."

And so, the wizard spun around until she was cleanly out of the room, and closed the door behind her. Placing a hand delicately on her chest, she exhaled a short sigh in distress.

“How are you going to get the changeling out, Ms Wares?” Orleans asked.

“Not by boiling water in eggshells, for sure,” Sofia said.

"I don't know what that means."

The two made their walk back out of the dorms, and back to the central hall of Ever After High.

"So, the traditional manner of getting rid of a changeling is via surprise. I don’t know how old Feiynman is, but show them something so spelltacular that they’ve never seen such a thing in the centuries that they lived… then they’d be so shocked that they flee.”

“What could that be?”

She frowned. “Given the advent of the MirrorNet, I’ve heard changelings have been much harder to beat. Fewer things surprise you now.”

Orleans looked crestfallen.

“I mean, let’s brainstorm. I’ll share a Sword Document with you over the Cloud."

“Whatever we come up with, is it definitely going to bring Turnus back, Ms Wares?”

Sofia exhaled, and she took off her glasses. “Get a changeling out of your house, that’s the easy step.” She wiped them on her shirt, then placed them back on her face. “Get the boy back, not so much.”

“What do you mean?”

She was silent. “Have you ever read stories about changelings, Orleans?”

“Not really.”

“There’s two steps of getting a child back. First, you have to get rid of the changeling. Then, you have to wait for the fae to return your child. In the stories, the first leads to the second. In real life… not always.”

She spoke with such weight, that her very words seemed to take up physical space in the room. Orleans felt a shiver go down his spine.

“I almost didn’t.”

Orleans didn’t respond.

“I almost didn’t come back.”

When the words left her mouth, it seemed like she would regret them. What a terrible, vulnerable moment, thought Sofia, and she let herself continue.

"One hand, shame. The other, you just had your life turned upside down by someone masquerading as you - how do you even return to your old life?”

For Turnus, she thought. He was going through, right now, one of the worst times in her life. She had wished people would understand her. Right now, all she could do was make sure people could understand Turnus.

“It’s often at transitionary periods, too. Marriages are common. Births. I had just graduated university. I was about to land my first job.”

She wasn’t talking to him anymore. She was just talking.

“I mean, I aced the interview, got the job, didn’t end up actually doing the job, because a changeling took over my life and was doing the job for me and--” she sighed. “It’s a lot. They left me in their Fairyland to do IT. IT! In Fairyland! That place is one giant Faeraday’s Page…”

With a sigh--

"I'm digressing. But remember, transitionary periods. So you just entered your new life, you can't back out and run to your old one, and most of the time, you can't even deal with the new world you're in, because you lost those years of your life."

"That's… I can't imagine…" Orleans' face was one of concern.

“If Turnus doesn’t make the autonomous choice himself, then no one can forcibly drag him back.”

“He’s… he’s a very autonomous person."

There was a stubbornness in Turnus Wyllt, one that Orleans felt was a wall he could never scale. Princes like Turnus don’t bend, they break.

Sofia sighed. “Don’t rest. We still have a changeling to exorcise.”

~*~

Feiynman was well-read: one room of their house was dedicated to a private library. Pink sticky notes noted each genre, and a spell has been cast on the library so that the books would always properly sort themselves. The first time Turnus had entered the room, copies of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights had hit him squarely in the chest as they tried to make their way from "romance" to "horror".

One evening, Utility Feng found him asleep in the room, over a copy of Joseph Campspell's "Hero of a Thousand Pages".

Like an older sister, they threw a blanket over him and put out a mug of hot chocolate on the table he was at. When he awoke, they talked more about stories.

Soon, the conversation drifted to his school filled with stories.

"Ever After High, huh," Utility said. "You've read your own story, haven't you? What did you get out of it?"

"You can't subsist of love alone."

Mayblossom loved Fanfarinet. Loved him enough to take magical items from her parents and run off with him. On the island that they sailed too, she saved food for him to share together. In return, he ate it all for himself.

It was not love that saved Mayblossom. It was self and self-preservation.

It was not love that Mayblossom found. It was the knowledge of who not to love.

"Rapunzel wove a silken ladder. The Canary Princess lowered herself by tying bedsheets," Utility nodded in agreement. "What did their princes ever do?"

"Incentive, maybe. A reason to see the outside world." In other words, bait. Whenever Turnus thought about fairytale princes, the interpretation never failed to be objectifying.

Though, apply his take to his own story, and you'd soon realise that 'bait' position was easily filled by the Ambassador Fanfarinet.

Bastion Fanfarinet... that name never left Turnus' mind. Dreams might be illogical, but the once-existence of Bastion was not.

"So, don't subsist off your love for others. Very sensible. What about yourself, though? Do you love yourself?"

Turnus Wyllt never gave Utility Feng an answer to that question. To their face, he pretended it was rhetorical. But mentally, he carried that question with him.

_Do you love yourself?_

The apprentice at the woodwork shop was always friendly, and when Turnus needed conversation and social interaction, he found himself frequenting the place. The tarp-covered sculpture near the back always fascinated him.

“Another delivery’s coming in right now,” Polyfaemus said one day. “I’m going out to fetch it.”

Turnus took this as an opportunity. As soon as the sounds of footsteps ceased, Turnus lifted the tarp in one swift sweep.

The last time Turnus saw a mirror of himself, aside from all the silver-backed 2D ones that everyone owns, was back in the archives of Ever After. Feiynman had turned their face and body into his own, had assumed his hexistence, and had sent him here.

The eyes of the sculpture was fixed with amber, but everything else was Westerwood. Turnus did not have to be on his tiptoes to directly face this thing - it was a replica perfectly. Those golden amber eyes were a little murky, and contained a fossil: a small trapped fly in motion but no longer.

In disgust, his eyes travelled down to observe what outfit he had been put in. Painting had already begun. The jacket the sculpture wore was a prince's coat, and the buttons were painted gold. Of all the coinage metals, gold was the most malleable. At Ever After High, Turnus had worn silver.

He felt a sinking pit of horror in his stomach, then placed the tarp back over it.

"I'm back, Young Wyllt," the woodworker strolled back, his young voice ringing. "Look at this."

It was a fresh order of gloss, to make sanded surfaces smooth and even more presentable.

No more did Turnus regard the other youth with any amicably, but a disturbing horror.

Polyfaemus had a habit of looking Turnus in the eye, of always being scrutinising and critical. This was the reason, Turnus realised, to preserve him in wechselbalg form.

_Do you love yourself?_

Not that version of himself.

On the walk back to the Nursery, the image of the sculpture burned in Turnus' mind.

~*~

At tabletop that night, Turnus’ thoughts were occupied. He told Utility that he needed to end the session early, and ended the episode of the story on a cold note: the computer engineer shooting the ship’s doctor.

Returning the dice to Feiynman’s game room, he sat down at the poker table in the corner of it, and idly picked up a pack of cards, and shuffled.

Simple probability tells you that there are fifty-two factorial permutations in a non-joker deck of cards. The magnitude of that number is sixty-seven. Turnus thought about this -- a very, very certain thing --, then thought about something less certain, which was the view that each person would bestow about him.

Just as mathematics is constant and unchangeable, perhaps the uncontrollable nature of human perspective was as well. Turnus did not have a choice on the inevitability of statistics, Turnus did not have a choice as to whether someone objectified him or not.

What he did have a choice in was that he could look at the cards in his hands, and rearrange them. He had a choice in his response, he could choose to respond or to ignore or to address someone, and to reiterate, _I will not accept this_.

The memory of the sculpture still burned.

Turnus Wyllt was going to make sure that memory burned.

~*~

“Things that are surprising… things that are surprising…” Sofia hummed to herself as she walked into a game store at Ever After. She found the aisle with the product she wanted quickly, made a sharp decision, purchased it, and walked out.

_Who in ever after has heard of a wizard who wastes their time with sleight of hand?_


	13. Fire or Not Fire

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_At that very moment, I thought that I could either fire or not fire._

|  | 

”  
  
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There were four mugs present on Potential Charming’s desk, and two coffee machines. All four mugs were gifts, and three of them were from his six-year-old son (paid for by his spouse, obviously).

“Feiynman’s switched again.” Sofia Wares gave no introduction as she walked in. Potential’s door was ajar. He believed that he had nothing to hide, academic privacy be damned.

The fourth mug was from Sofia. It was a Secret Santa gift, from a small holiday gathering of a very small and specific group of people. On the mug, there was an artwork similar to those diagrams on human evolution - hominid species walking towards the right, following each other, except that the species in the diagrams were various types of fae. Underneath it, in nice typography, were lyrics from Bowie: “ch-ch-ch-changes”.

In other words, everyone in that group had the hexact same type of humour.

“Oh?” said Potential, perking up from his desk. It faced the door, and the only window in the room was not behind him, but on his right. “I guess we’ll be seeing Utility at the holiday parties?”

“That’s your first reaction? And not, ‘oh no, who is this poor new sod’?”

“Oh Grimm, you’re right, Sofia. That’s so rude of me,” the words that exited Potential’s mouth may have sounded sarcastic, but everything the prince said was genuine. “Who is this poor new sod?”

“My brother-in-law.”

“Oh no, poor sod.”

~*~

When Sofia Wares first stepped into the Nursery, piano music was playing from the upstairs. It wasn't piano music played well. You could tell that whoever was at the piano was still learning the piece, with how many wrong notes hit, and how many times that they had to stop and repeat a section.

With a mechanical pencil, over a piano, Potential Charming was going over Morning Song from Grieg's Peer Gynt. He was circling a note that had been consistently erroneous when a bell downstairs rang, indicating that someone had entered through the door, so he exited out to greet them.

A woman was there - lost and confused, with large framed glasses that obscured the rest of her face. “I’m Sofia…” she said. “I’m new here?”

The interjection that Potential Charming likes to use was ‘by von Schonwerth’, but this was four years back, and von Schonwerth hadn’t been rediscovered yet. So, his response was a simple question: “human?”

“Uh, wizard.”

“So human.”

“Yeah.”

“Great! I’m human too!” and he extended a hand. She awkwardly shook it.

“Were you… uh--”

“Replaced? Of course.” Potential answered in a tone that made it sound like it was obvious. “If you’re here, it’s probably the same fae, so I’m leaving now. I want out.”

She frowned. “But I just got here! Who are you, even?”

But Potential Charming had already run past her, and was out the door. “Potential Charming!” he called. “I’m Potential Charming, once again!”

~*~

“Anyway,” he said, and opened up a drawer to reveal a coffee pod, which he proceeded to put into one of the coffee machines. “Congratulations on the marriage. Spouse and I end our regards. Did you get my gift in the mail?”

“The decorative key, wasn’t it? The craftsmanship of it is incredible.” Sofia remembered it. Immediately after she had opened the box, she told Brutus to wear it around his neck with a ribbon. He did. If he didn’t, she would have bugged him until he did.

“You kids and your fancy smart-locks. I think I’m getting old.”

“That’s not why you sent the key.” She knew too well. You don’t come out of hosting a changeling without intense paranoia from the incident.

“Everybody thinks about keys as things that open other things. That’s true, but they do more than that! They close off things, too.” The espresso machine had finally finished its brew. Potential then added an imbalanced ratio of milk and whipped cream to the espresso, and topped it with rainbow sprinkles. “Transition stages, Sofia. That’s when they prefer to strike. You know when I was replaced? I was just recently married. And we were hexpecting.”

“Anyway, we have to talk about Turnus Wyllt.”

“What a good kid,” Potential said. “I remember Turnus well. He was so smart! So energetic! Told me a lot of cool facts about outer space. What a good kid.”

"And you made him a trophy prince."

"Well, yes. The social standing is nice. Maximised rewards for minimal effort. I enjoyed being one, it's near universal."

"Such a smart kid, you said, with so much potential…"

“I genuinely don’t think you can be ‘too smart’ to be a fairytale prince,” he said. “That’s just… I don’t know, that’s just underestimating the abilities of fairytale princes. We can do things other than waiting to be rescued by princesses.”

Sofia sighed, and shook her head. "We keep digressing! Also, you keep missing the point. This is about Turnus. He's been kidnapped by the faeries."

"That's not very fun. The being kidnapped by faeries part. But the people you get to meet are!"

“Brutus is the greatest person in my life,” she said. “Not everyone handles being kidnapped by the fae well. The fact that he's able to get me through this...”

“Very few of us do,” Potential nodded in agreement.

“I spent my last two years recovering from the two years before that. You know how it is.”

“Legally, I’ve been married for six years. In reality, I’ve only been married for four.”

The way that the two spoke was always disjointed to a third listener. It was as if their statements never truly responded to one another, and were just thoughts, vaguely related, thrown out into the air. Perhaps it was due to an innate sense of understanding, perhaps both were stubborn and cared too much about their own voice too much to listen.

Potential Charming stopped talking, and proceeded to drink more of his coffee. “I will see my son grow, no one can take that away from me. Whatever the sort of person Turnus truly is, a switch can’t take that away from him.”

(But Princes like Turnus don’t bend, they break.)

Sofia, who was distressed, suddenly seemed even more sad. “Maybe it’s my fault,” she said. “Brutus’ parents never dreamt of destiny. They didn’t even think Ever After High was a possibility. But Turnus is so smart. He’s one of my favourite people. If I had to see him suffer, just because he couldn’t do magic-- if I had to see him lose opportunities, just because of his environment… and what I did was get him into Ever After High and make him no more than just a prince and with no expectation, and he got bored and tired and repressed, and if it weren’t for all of that, he probably wouldn’t have gotten into this mess, or attracted the attention of people who want him out of the way because of who he is and--”

And with that ramble of hers, which was difficult to follow for Potential (who was in the room) and acceptably frustrating and long enough for the casual reader to skip over, she finally took a seat in Potential’s office.

“Didn’t you say that I was the one who made him a trophy prince?”

“Yes, but it was my idea in the first place to even send him here! You’re right! There’s very few accessible story openings otherwise! What was I _thinking_?”

Instead of making another coffee, Potential took a mug, wheeled his office chair over to the water filter, and poured Sofia a mug of water. She took a sip and several long deep breaths.

“Being an Ever After High student is a gift in some ways. I like to think of it like that,” Potential said, after a bit of time. “You get to meet cool people. You get to talk to cool people. You get your name written down and artwork commissioned of you, and the bards of today write some spiffy ballads. It’s a pretty neat life.”

With a final sip, he finished off his coffee.

“You could fight and die and live a short glorious life in Troy. You could sail back to Phthia and live a long life in obscurity.” He took a sip from the coffee he just poured.

“I’m not following.”

“I like to think that I’m granting glory.”

Conversations with Potential always seem to digress like so. The prince was so concerned with ‘the wider world’, with ‘human nature’, and what it meant to be a person. Sometimes, he could forget about individual people. When Sofia spoke to him, it could be confusing. She liked to think in specifics, in non-redundant clear lines of thought.

Potential liked the system, to some extent. The system worked for him. He had the personality for it, he obsessed over it. Meanwhile, Sofia was never part of it.

“Potential,” she said to get his attention again. “How do you want your son to be?”

“How do I _want_ him to be? He’s his own person!”

“Answer my question.”

“Fine, fine. No matter how he turns out, I hope that he’s a greater person than I am.”

“And how do you hope the legacies you assign to be?”

“Same thing. A greater person than their predecessors.”

“Okay,” and Sofia wondered if the way she was approaching this problem could be equivalent to the Socratic Method. Either way, she decided that it was some horrid human mimicry of an if-else loop. “If you think about it, I’m technically your successor, right? The witch after me, Utility Feng, was our successor. Now, Turnus is there, in the Nursery, and he’s succeeding all of us, as the host of Feiynman! You have words, you have ideas, all this ‘succeeding your father’ talk!”

She didn’t have to finish her thoughts for Potential to see her thoughts. “You want him to have a better life… be a better person… than either of us.”

“Yes!”

“And if I speak this prettily about all of this, then I am duty-bound to ensure Turnus Wyllt’s comfort and happiness?”

“Of course.”

He sighed. “Fine. What’s your plan, Sofia?”

From her bag, she took out an engineer’s notebook, with clearly sketched out designs. “A second opinion, mostly. From someone who actually knows how to pun.”

Without fail, Potential Charming made another coffee. He was out of coasters, so from his bookshelf, he pulled out a recent edition of the Odyssey, set it down on the table, and set the coffee down upon it.

~*~

Utility Feng returned with the Nightmare Fog in a mason jar. The lid was sealed shut with Page-afilm. Inside, the contents themselves seemed to fight with another - shapes dark, like magnetic iron sand. They kept it on the kitchen table, only for Turnus to store it inside a tote bag he had found.

“Is faerie fire under human arcane?” he asked them. “Can witches cast it?”

But Utility merely told him that Dungeons and Damsels was not a reliable source for magical reference.

He thought of fire a lot, mostly in dreams. The thoughts have replaced those of Bastion Fanfarinet -- for a more pertinent issue, an issue more direct to him.

Some people won’t ever be able to cast fire spells, but boxes of matches stowed in kitchen drawers do exist.

~*~

The first time Turnus talked to Polyfaemus, he had asked a simple question: a favour for his name. What Turnus needed now from Polyfaemus was not merely the knowledge of the man’s name, but access to his work.

In the neatest handwriting he could, he produced a list of questions. At the very bottom of that paper, he gave space to sign. Name, requested the blanks he gave. Occupation. Property.

While browsing the woodshop, he politely prodded Polyfaemus into an interview, and for “authenticity purposes”, told him:

"I need your name. And property."


	14. Tender Indifference

|  |  |  | 

“

|  | 

_I opened myself for the first time to the tender indifference of the world._

|  | 

”  
  
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“Have you ever exorcised a demon? I’ve written code on it, funnily enough, about protecting the security of patients and people who have dealt with that sort of divine interference.” Sofia rambled on the way to the woods. “They store all the possessions in databases. If you have enough information on one demon, you might be able to find some formula for their activity - and get them before they get to their next victim.”

She decided not to mention how there was something similar for changelings, and other beings that possessed people’s identities or bodies. Even though these databases existed and the idea to use them to track movement was there, it didn’t mean it was a research topic of interest. For one thing, privacy was a concern. For the other, funding in that area was very minimal. Of course, the amount of paperwork put a lot of investigators off the idea, as well.

“Changelings are not demons. Demons still have the body of their host. Changelings? Their bodies are their own bodies. What you really want to destroy is their presence. I guess that’s our part in this scheme. The second half, where the stolen child returns? That’s all on Turnus.”

Orleans le Nouveau was doing his best to keep up with Sofia’s rambling.

The thing about Feiynman was that Feiynman was once Sofia, and was Sofia two years past. When one is in their twenties, personality between two years is very stagnant and consistent. Feiynman had lived her life, they had caused concern for her family and friends. In other words, Feiynman knew Sofia well.

In other words, Sofia's means of tricking Feiynman had to be something about her that she picked up after Feiynman.

Feiynman couldn’t turn down a good bet. They were also mimicking the body of a quarter-demon, and the earnestness to stay in character for that would have won over anything.

“No magic use, I promise,” Sofia had said, when she and Orleans went back up one day to confront the changeling and strike the deal. “I’ll even put up a concentration spell barrier. If I don’t surprise you - not this once, I personally won’t bother you ever again.”

Now, in the neck of the forest where she promised him to meet, Sofia waited.

Orleans stood off near the side. Externally, he was the most worried.

The changeling that they were looking for entered the woods, with a body not belonging to them. The dull purple hair blended in with the dark of the forest, that even Sofia had to squint to confirm that it was them.

“Feiynman. I’m here, Feiynman,” Sofia called out to him.

The changeling approached the two.

“Look, Feiynman, I just want to talk,” she continued, and from her pocket, she pulled out the deck of cards. “To you, in particular.” Fanning out the contents in her hand, she offered it to them. “Pick a card. Don’t show me.”

“Aren’t you a wizard?”

“Pick a Grimmdamn card, Feiynman.”

So the changeling did, the Sofia proceeded. The routine was closely based off one of Turnus’ that she had seen - Sofia hadn’t gotten invested enough into magic tricks to make one of her own. Small tricks upon tricks build on each other.

Feiynman was skeptical, was surprised, was impressed, was not _shocked_.

“Is this your card? No, of course it’s not your card. Check your pocket, is there a card in there?”

Feiynman did. Sure enough, there was. “It’s my card.”

“Great work. Repeat the name of the card back to me. Thanks. You’re still holding onto that card, aren’t you? Now, what’s this in my hand? Also your card. That’s because, this entire deck… appears to be your card.”

She would have brought in other things - a trick that involved a permanent marker and a cross, one with a watch that she was fond of, and one involving wine in an egg, but those required more props than she had available.

“Is this your card? Of course it’s your card. What else could it be?” Sofia turned it around, and Feyinman was face to face with a Joker. “I mean, it has to be your card. It’s anything I want it to be.”

At that, Feiynman’s response was nothing but laughter. “You really got me there, I’m out, I quit.”

“Repeat the last two sentences.”

“I’m out. I quit,” he managed to enunciate through his laughter.

“You said it yourself. Stop being my brother, Feiynman.”

But he wouldn’t stop laughing at the trick. Sofia knew the changeling legends - a bit too well. It was at these moments when a changeling would leave.

“Well, it’s nice to defeat you for real.” No bragging, no boasts. It was a simple statement, a clear declaration of humility in victory. “Orleans,” she called to the boy. “A touch of finality.”

Into her hands, he placed an egg and a wine-glass.

“Hold this,” said Sofia, handing the egg to Feiynman and holding out the wine-glass in front of them. “Go on, pour yourself a drink, I’m sure you’ll _crack up_ \-- as if you haven’t already -- over this.”

Without further prompting, Feiynman cracked the egg, and its contents spill into the glass. Wine… more classy than the traditional beer. The evening before, Sofia had punctured small holes at opposing ends into the egg, used gravity and air pressure to rinse the contents out, and sealed it with glue, filled it with Cabernet.

He drank it, but the wine had been left out overnight, and tasted like vinegar. Feiynman spat it out, and shook his head. “Well, I guess I’m homebound,” said the changeling, and disappeared into the woods.

~*~

On a day where Polyfaemus was out, Turnus went into the shop. Placing the statue upon a wheeled cart, Turnus escaped the shop with it.

"You're old," he said to it, as he wheeled the statue along. "Old as Westerwood. But I've bet you've never seen anything quite like this."

In the myth of Sisyphus, the king Sisyphus orders his wife to dispose of his dead body in the public square. _Such disrespect_ , he would then say to Thanatos in the Underworld, _I deserve to go back to scold her_.

In the Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus argues that persistent struggle was essential to human life.

Turnus Wyllt kicked the statue down off the cart, into the middle of the public square. Striking a set of matches he found in the kitchen of the Nursery, he was set on seeing that image burn. Soon, concerned fae around him seemed to catch sight of him. _Let them watch_ , he thought. What better place to make a statement, but a forum itself?

While this was all going on, a changeling was making their way home. Feiynman resumed the body of Turnus Wyllt - there was no reason not to.

~*~

“All we can do is wait, as you say,” Orleans said.

On the way back, Sofia decided not to mention a few things. One of them was she had messed up one of the steps of the last trick, and pulling the Joker out of her back pocket (slashed there for its irrelevancy) was the only way she could think of to amend it. She didn’t even make it halfway through the planned routine. All of the good puns Potential had written were present in the second half.

They had reached the opening of the woods, where Brutus was waiting. He ran over and hugged both of them.

~*~

It didn’t catch on fire immediately, Turnus Wyllt soon realised. The fresh coat of gloss prevented it from doing so. If he could nick it on something, or break off part of it so the westerwood would be revealed. So Turnus brought his foot up, and snap down it went on the statue’s right arm. And he had taken Utility’s Swiss army knife off their bedroom dresser table before he left in the morning.

The townspeople realised what they were seeing was just a teenage breakdown, and walked on in their day-to-day lives.

For Feiynman, to get home to the Nursery required a walk through the town square. So imagine his surprise when he saw what was his current image fighting a statue of his current image.

"I spent good money on that," Feiynman said.

The sound of his voice alerted Turnus, who instantaneously turned his head towards them. “You! I… I don’t know which one of _me_ I’d deal with first.”

But Feiynman was not stationary, was not merely object. In other words, a more immediate threat.

"Give me my image back. My likeness!" he said. "If anyone is going to capitalise on that, then it's me. No Princess Mayblossom, no Storybook of Legends, and definitely no changeling replacement. Turnus Wyllt is Turnus Wyllt's only!"

In the middle of the public square, Turnus Wyllt reached into the tote bag and threw the Nightmare Fog. The mason jar landed and smashed at Feiynman’s feet. When he had asked Utility for the jar, it had been a request in case of emergencies. But seeing the man who took his image had filled him with such an anger, that he had to have his retribution.

Nightmare Fog cursed one to live out the dream of their greatest fear, though the victim would merely appear asleep. The only indication of the substance would be the eerie dark fog that surrounded their body, that would eventually dissipate, waking them up.

Turnus kept striking matches at it, charring parts but never setting it ablaze. In some changeling stories, you could rid of the monster by throwing it in rivers, but there were none of those in this Fairyland.

Polyfaemus had realised the loss of the statue and his cart, and was running over, tracking Turnus’ location by the dirt marks left from the cart’s wheels. “Turnus Wyllt!” he yelled, hoping his voice was not drowned by the confrontation between man and fae. “I did good work on that!”

"I'll give you another face to carve!" Turnus yelled at he carved yet another scar into the mirror of his.

"Turnus!"

To set the whole thing on fire was difficult, without kindling or tinder, without sufficient oxygen, with the westerwood statue being so dense. He might not ever be able to make it burn with all the hell in him, but if he could disfigure it beyond recognition… if he could have someone look at the statue and not see it as Turnus Wyllt at all…

The next carve was across the eyes like Oedipus - those amber spheres falling from the sockets. Then, in furious repetition, at the hair.

Polyfaemus didn’t intervene, but Turnus heard quiet sobbing.

“Please… I hadn’t even been paid in full yet…”

That sentence was the one thing that caught Turnus’ attention. He pulled himself off the statue -- the statue with its disfigured face and hacked-off hair -- and forced himself to come eye-to-eye with the sculptor.

“You had all the right--” Polyfaemus began.

“I’m sorry.”

“You tricked me out of ownership--”

“This image wasn’t yours in the first place,” said Turnus. “But… the labour was, I guess. All the work to make it.”

He still had Polyfaemus’ name, and occupation, and property.

Turnus was, in his own right, some sort of artist. He wrote, and some of the content he wrote used to be original, until he started Veritas and finally started to find the real world more gripping than his high fantasy lands. Because of this, he knew empathetically, that Polyfaemus was innocently caught in the crossfire.

Was the image of himself mangled beyond recognition? Turnus looked at it, and didn’t see himself.

But, in a mist of Nightmare Fog, there was the secondary image to deal with.

He pushed the scarred and lightly roasted statue away. Turnus in his simple strength and few resources would not have destroyed it in full. Instead, he turned towards where Feiynman was lying.

He breathed in, and ran into the Nightmare Fog to roll Feiynman out of it. “Wake up,” he prodded him, waving his arms to dissipate the mist.

“Why…” said the changeling.

“Call it desperation, call it what you will. Are you awake yet?”

“Why am I taking orders from a sixteen-year-old kid?” Feiynman was still lying reclined on the ground, still with Turnus’ appearance. He decided the best thing to do was to cover his face with his hands, and roll to the side, away from Turnus.

“That sounds awake.” Turnus did his best to put on a stern voice.

Feiynman sighed, standing up after having been called out, and dusted themselves off. Turnus realised that he still had a Swiss army knife on him, and held it out in front, in defence. He made sure that none of the knives were out, so his movements could not be reasonably interpreted as a threat.

“First,” said Turnus, “I don’t know what you have against me, or my life, or-- I just don’t know anything. Start talking, I guess.”

This was how confrontation worked, did it not? Turnus remembered walking out on that first Gabriel meeting, he remembered walking off the roof when he talked to an ethereal and fake Fanfarinet in his dreams. He had addressed his problems in escapism -- in fiction, in writing, behind paper or a screen.

“Talk?”

“Or do better, like, I don’t know, take action against what you did?”

“I can act, you know that. Here, and I’ll take action as well.” Feiynman’s form had a backpack on, and from it, he pulled out a chequebook and a pen. “I’ll write two cheques. One’s labour. One’s image.” He signed in loopy handwriting, tore them out. The former, he handed to Polyfaemus. The latter, he held it out to Turnus.

The woodshop apprentice seemed more greatly comforted. With a stiff “Thanks”, he took the cheque, and turned to leave.

“Polyfaemus! Before you go!” Turnus called out to him.

“What?”

“Do you have a business card? Do you take human money? If I’m out of Fairyland, are you still contactable?”

“Yeah, sure. Drop by the store, pick one up.” Without another sentence, without even turning his head to face him, Polyfaemus left. His movements were not the smooth, dragonfly-like steps, but tense and firm.

Turnus had asked for one reason: he really wanted high-quality Dungeons & Damsels miniatures. He was a boy who still, at heart, loved his high fantasy universes and stories, but he was not an unrealistic boy. With Polyfaemus’ tone of voice, with the tearstained eyes, with what Turnus had done to him, there was little chance of amicability. When the time comes, he promised to himself, he’d apologise.

But this was a tense situation, and how could he just have lost himself in thinking about his hobbies? Then again, he was only human.

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

Feiynman, who was still in Turnus Wyllt’s form, who was still standing there, looked at Turnus with concern and guilt. “Why? I had to, I had orders, I had pay.”

“So it’s not personal, is it?”

“Does that matter to you, Young Wyllt?”

“Is it a thing for changelings, then? Like, replace a person for hire?” Turnus had accepted that if Feiynman was going to drag him into this world, into this way of questioning things, then some truth must be obtained through it. “Who paid you?”

“Once again, does that matter? You’ve been rescued, by your friend and your sister. That’s why I’m here. I’m telling you that you’re free to go, given the bounds of our laws.”

“Not before I get some information.”

“Fine, who I am to deny your questions? I’ll either give you an answer, or say that I’m unable to.”

At this point, the army knife and lighter had been stowed in his back pocket, and in his hand, was the pen and the pocket notebook. In the middle of the public square, by the statue that once depicted his image, he asked the changeling to sit down, and he transcribed as much as he could.

It was not a friendly conversation.

It was an interrogation.

They talk.

“What was the statue for?”

“It’s… it’s tradition. A Celtic one, specifically. Some changelings aren’t people, they’re objects. My friend and I were testing out something, a sort-of ‘speed-run’ of the process. Your image just happened to be readily available to the artist we wanted to hire.”

His image...

When Turnus looked at the changeling with his form, he didn’t see his own body.

The straightened hair, the plain attire, who was it for? The reason why he stripped himself clean of any motifs was not to display integrity for himself, it was out of shame for his role and story.

Remember, Princes like Turnus don’t bend, they break.

But your narrator has never said what gets broken.

Fairyland is like a Faeraday’s Page, enclosed from all external signals. It had become the eggshell of an incubating chick - a globular mess, distinguishable, maturing into recognisable, distinct form. But one will suffocate if they do not see the world, if they do not feel the sun or experience the freedom to move about.

Here, Turnus Wyllt breaks the eggshell.

“I’ll take my body back,” he said. “And I’ll properly make it my own.”

That evening, the fae security escorted him back through the mirror portal. It was dark, and Orleans with his early bedtime, was already asleep when Turnus tucked himself back into his own bed.

In stories, the stolen child returns soundly.

In practise, the stolen child never quite returns the same.


End file.
